Goats.—According to Guinard, goats are proof against the narcotic influence of morphine. Large doses kill goats, but death is caused by interference with the respiratory function. A young goat weighing 30 kilos, showed little effect beyond a slightly increased cerebral excitability after two doses of 8 and 8·5 grms. respectively of morphine hydrochlorate had been administered by intravenous injection, the second being given an hour and a half after the first. To the same animal two days afterwards 195 grms. were administered in the same way, yet the goat recovered. The lethal dose for a goat seems to be no less than 1000 times that which will produce narcotism in man, and lies somewhere between 0·25 to 0·30 per kilo. of the body weight.[382]
[382] Compt. Rend., t. cxvi. pp. 520-522.
Cats and the Felidæ.—According to Guinard,[383] morphine injected subcutaneously or intravenously into cats, in doses varying from 0·4 mgrm. to 90 mgrms. per kilo., never produces sleep or narcotic prostration. On the contrary, it causes a remarkable degree of excitement, increasing in intensity with the dose given. This excitement is evidently accompanied by disorder in the functions of the brain, and if the dose is large convulsions set in, ending in death. According to Milne-Edwards, the same symptoms are produced in lions and tigers.
[383] Compt. Rend., t. cxi. pp. 981-983. The bovine animals also get excited, and no narcotic effect is produced by dosing them with morphine.—Compt. Rend. Soc. de Biologie, t. iv., v.
Birds, especially pigeons, are able to eat almost incredible quantities of opium. A pigeon is said[384] to have consumed 801 grains of opium, mixed with its food, in fourteen days. The explanation of this is that the poison is not absorbed; for subcutaneous injections of salts of morphine act rapidly on all birds hitherto experimented upon.