Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. II

by Erasmus Darwin

When opium has been required in large doses to ease or prevent convulsions, some have advised the patient to omit the use of wine, as a greater quantity of opium might then be exhibited; and as opium seems to increase absorption more, and secretion less, than vinous spirit; it may in some cases be useful to exchange one for the other; as in diseases attended with too great evacuation, as diarrhœa, and dysentery, opium may be preferable; on the contrary in tetanus, or locked-jaw, where inflammation of the system might be of service, wine may be preferable to opium; see Class [III. 1. 1. 13]. I have generally observed, that a mixture of spirit of wine and warm water, given alternately with the doses of opium, has soonest and most certainly produced that degree of intoxication, which was necessary to relieve the patient in the epilepsia dolorifica.

[6]. There is likewise some relief given by opium to inflammatory pains, or those from excess of motion in the affected part; but with this difference, that this relief from the pains, and the sleep, which it occasions, does not occur till some hours after the exhibition of the opium. This requires to be explained; after the stimulus of opium or of alcohol ceases, as after common drunkenness, a consequent torpor comes on; and the whole habit becomes less irritable by the natural stimuli. Hence the head-achs, sickness, and languor, on the next day after intoxication, with cold skin, and general debility. Now in pains from excess of motion, called inflammatory pains, when opium is given, the pain is not relieved, till the debility comes on after the stimulus ceases to act; for then after the greater stimulus of the opium has exhausted much of the sensorial power; the less stimulus, which before caused the pain, does not now excite the part into unnatural action.

In these cases the stimulus of the opium first increases the pain; and it sometimes happens, that so great a torpor follows, as to produce the death or mortification of the affected part; whence the danger of giving opium in inflammatory diseases, especially in inflammation of the bowels; but in general the pain returns with its former violence, when the torpor above mentioned ceases. Hence these pains attended with inflammation are best relieved by copious venesection, other evacuations, and the class of medicines called torpentia.

[7]. These pains from excess of motion are attended with increased heat of the whole, or of the affected part, and a strong quick pulse; the pains from defect of motion are attended with cold extremities, and a weak pulse; which is also generally more frequent than natural, but not always so.

[8]. Opium and alcohol are the only two drugs, we are much acquainted with, which intoxicate; and by this circumstance are easily distinguished from the secernentia and sorbentia. Camphor, and cicuta, and nicotiana, are thought to induce a kind of intoxication; and there are many other drugs of this class, whose effects are less known, or their doses not ascertained; as atropa belladonna, hyocyamus, stramonium, prunus laurocerasus, menispermum, cynoglossum, some fungi, and the water distilled from black cherry-stones; the last of which was once much in use for the convulsions of children, and was said to have good effect; but is now improvidently left out of our pharmacopias. I have known one leaf of the laurocerasus, shred and made into tea, given every morning for a week with no ill consequence to a weak hysteric lady, but rather perhaps with advantage.

[9]. The pernicious effects of a continued use of much vinous spirit is daily seen and lamented by physicians; not only early debility, like premature age, but a dreadful catalogue of diseases is induced by this kind of intemperance; as dropsy, gout, leprosy, epilepsy, insanity, as described in Botanic Garden, Part II. Canto III. line 357. The stronger or less diluted the spirit is taken, the sooner it seems to destroy, as in dram-drinkers; but still sooner, when kernels of apricots, or bitter almonds, or laurel-leaf, are infused in the spirit, which is termed ratafia; as then two poisons are swallowed at the same time. And vinegar, as it contains much vinous spirit, is probably a noxious part of our diet. And the distilled vinegar, which is commonly sold in the shops, is truly poisonous, as it is generally distilled by means of a pewter or leaden alembic-head or worm-tube, and abounds with lead; which any one may detect by mixing with it a solution of liver of sulphur. Opium, when taken as a luxury, not as a medicine, is as pernicious as alcohol; as Baron de Tott relates in his account of the opium-eaters in Turkey.

[10]. It must be observed, that a frequent repetition of the use of this class of medicines so habituates the body to their stimulus, that their dose may gradually be increased to an astonishing quantity, such as otherwise would instantly destroy life; as is frequently seen in those, who accustom themselves to the daily use of alcohol and opium; and it would seem, that these unfortunate people become diseased as soon as they omit their usual potations; and that the consequent gout, dropsy, palsy, or pimpled face, occur from the debility occasioned from the want of accustomed stimulus, or to some change in the contractile fibres, which requires the continuance or increase of it. Whence the cautions necessary to be observed are mentioned in Sect. XII. 7. 8.

[11]. It is probable, that some of the articles in the subsequent catalogue do not induce intoxication, though they have been esteemed to do so; as tobacco, hemlock, nux vomica, stavisagria; and on this account should rather belong to other arrangements, as to the secernentia, or sorbentia, or invertentia.

[II]. [1]. Externally the application of heat, as the warm bath, by its stimulus on the skin excites the excretory ducts of the perspirative glands, and the mouths of the lymphatics, which open on its surface, into greater action; and in consequence many other irritative motions, which are associated with them. To this increased action is added pleasurable sensation, which adds further activity to the system; and thus many kinds of pain receive relief from this additional atmosphere of heat.

The use of a warm bath of about 96 or 98 degrees of heat, for half an hour once a day for three or four months, I have known of great service to weak people, and is perhaps the least noxious of all unnatural stimuli; which however, like all other great excitement, may be carried to excess, as complained of by the ancients. The unmeaning application of the words relaxation and bracing to warm and cold baths has much prevented the use of this grateful stimulus; and the misuse of the term warm-bath, when applied to baths colder than the body, as to those of Buxton and Matlock, and to artificial baths of less than 90 degrees of heat, which ought to be termed cold ones, has contributed to mislead the unwary in their application.