ON THE ADULTERATION ON DRUGS. 
121 
constitutions; and, therefore the physician must always begin 
with a very small dose, and gradually increase it till the effect 
he desires be obtained. Now, suppose he has begun with the 
weakest acid of the shops, that he has brought up the dose, 
as may well happen, to ten, fifteen, or even twenty drops, and 
that then, the store of this sample being exhausted, the drug- 
gist betakes himself to an article, which, unknown to him, is 
of four times the strength. What is likely to be the result? 
The death of the patient would be not improbable. 
5. Let me add another instance of the like kind. The active 
principle of nux-vomica, strychnia, now currently employed 
as a remedy in the chronic forms and stage of paralytic 
affections, is very little inferior in energy as a poison to hy- 
drocyanic acid. In the shops it is scarcely ever met with 
pure ; because even the impure article bears a very high 
price, and because its complete purification, besides being 
troublesome, and probably unnecessary in respect of its ex- 
cessive energy, cannot be accomplished except at such loss as 
would raise its value from fifty shillings to five or six guineas 
an ounce. The article of the shops always contains a large 
proportion of another alkaloid, brucia, whose effects on the 
animal body are precisely the same in kind, but much inferior in 
degree. This impregnation is probably advantageous rather 
than the reverse; because by diluting a drug of such tremen- 
dous activity as strychnia, it is rendered more manageable in 
medical practice. But another impurity, of great consequence 
in a medicinal point of view, is inert coloring matter. The 
proportion of this varies much, some specimens having a dark 
brown color, others a light grayish brown, and some being 
very nearly colorless. It is almost unnecessary to point out 
the serious consequences which may ensue from such irregu- 
larities in the strength of so potent a medicine. The danger 
is the greater, that, in order to do any good in palsy, it must 
be given in such quantity as to excite a certain degree of its 
physiological or poisonous influence. An accident which 
happened not long ago in my own practice will sufficiently 
VOL. iv. — NO. II 16 
