MORPHINE. 
309 
§ 368.1 
effects of strychnine. No rules can be laid down for cases which do not 
run a normal course ; in medicine such are being constantly met with, and 
require all the care and acumen of the trained observer. Cases of disease 
render a diagnosis often extremely difficult, and the more so in those in¬ 
stances in which a dose of laudanum or other opiate has been administered. 
In a case under the observation of one of us, a woman, suffering from 
emphysema and bronchitis, sent to a chemist for a sleeping-draught, 
which she took directly it arrived. A short time afterwards she fell into 
a profound slumber, and died within six hours. The draught had been 
contained in an ounce-and-a-half bottle ; the bottle was empty, and the 
druggist stated in evidence that it only contained 20 minims of laudanum, 
10 grains of potassic bromide, and water. On, however, diluting the 
single drop remaining in the bottle, and imitating its colour with several 
samples of laudanum diluted in the same way, the conclusion was come to 
that the quantity of laudanum which the bottle originally contained was 
far in excess of that which had been stated, and that it was over 1 
drachm and under 2 drachms. The body was pallid, the pupils strongly 
contracted, the vessels of the brain membranes were filled with fluid 
blood, and there was about an ounce of serous fluid in each ventricle. 
The lungs were excessively emphysematous, and there was much 
secretion in the bronchi; the liver was slightly cirrhotic. The blood, the 
liver, and the contents of the stomach were exhaustively analysed 
with the greatest care, but no trace of morphine, narcotine, or meconic 
acid could be separated, although the woman did not live more than 
six hours after taking the draught. It was, in the woman’s state, 
improper to prescribe a sedative of that kind, and probably death had 
been accelerated, if not directly caused, by the opium. 
Apoplexy will only simulate opium-poisoning during life ; a post¬ 
mortem examination will at once reveal the true nature of the malady. 
In epilepsy, however, it is different, and more than once an epileptic 
fit has occurred and been followed by coma—a coma which certainly 
cannot be distinguished from that produced by a narcotic poison. 
Death in this stage may follow, and on examining the body no lesiou 
may be found. 
§ 368. Opium-eating. —The consumption of opium is a very ancient 
practice among Eastern nations, and the picture, drawn by novelist and 
traveller, of poor, dried-up, yellow mortals addicted to this vice, with 
their faculties torpid, their skin hanging in wrinkles on their wasted 
bodies, the conjunctiva? tinged with bile, the bowels so inactive that 
there is scarcely an excretion in the course of a week, the mental faculties 
verging on idiocy and imbecility, is only true of a percentage of those 
who are addicted to the habit. In the British Medical Journal for 
1894, Jan. 13 and 20, will be found a careful digest of the evidence 
collated from 100 Indian medical officers, from which it appears that opium 
