Materia Medica

By: Biddle, John Barclay

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CLASS I.'NEUROTICS. ORDER I. NARCOTICS. Narcotics (from vapxeui, to stupefy), are medicines which impair or destroy nervous action. When administered in not immediately poisonous doses, they often produce at first a moderate degree of excitation; but this is rapidly followed by diminished activity in the functions of innervation. The different narcotics have most of them some special peculiarity of action; but they all agree in exerting a sedative or stupefying influence on the motor, sensor, and intellectual functions. Hence their therapeutic employment, to remove muscular spasm, relieve pain, allay cerebral or spinal irritability, and procure sleep. The influence of this class of medicines upon the system is rapidly diminished by habit; and when administered for a length of time, they are to be given in gradually-increasing doses. When employed to relieve pain, they are termed anodynes; when employed to procure sleep, hypnotics or soporifics. Opium. Opium (from oxos, juice), is the Concrete Juice of the unripe capsules of Papaver somniferum (Nat. Ord. Papave- racese). The opium poppy is a native of Persia, but is cultivated in various parts of Asia, in Europe, and in the United States. It is an annual plant, with a round, leafy stem, from two to four feet or more in height, and large four-petaled flowers. There are two prominent varieties of this species: the black poppy, with violet-colored or red flowers, brown or blackish seeds, and globular capsules; and the white poppy, with white flowers and seeds, and ovate capsules; but these varieties run into each other under cultivation. The Ripe Capsules (papaver) are from an inch and a half to two inches or more in diameter, and contain a good deal of opium. They are sometimes given to children in the form of ...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0217232876
• ISBN13: 9780217232876
• Release Date: May 2014
• Publisher: General Books LLC
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"