Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A study of doses : essay LVII / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![At Bradford, sixty years ago, my uncle and I, were suddenly summoned in the evening to a young man, who had taken owwce of Laudanum (Tincture of Opium). It was near; we went immediately ; we found him in a state of very great excitement. What my uncle did I do not remember, but I have no doubt that he gave him an emetic; he then left me with the patient, saying, “ walk him about all night.” This, however, I could not do, for the young man took hold of my arm and walked me about all night in a way that I shall never forget. In a few days he was well. Here we have again one action of excitement. Between the small doses which cause excitement, and the larger doses which cause sleep or stupor, we know that there are intermediate doses having both these actions, one following the other; it is, therefore, most probable that between the larger doses producing sleep and this dose which produced so much excitement, there is also an intermediate group of doses having the two contrary or “ see-saw ” actions. Another experiment follows, with an enormous dose, the largest I have met with. In the first volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions (1809) isAn account of the effects produced by a large quantity of Laudanum taken internally, by Alexander Marcet, M.D., F.R.S. Communicated Dec., 1806.” “ On the 6th of Nov. last, Mr. Astley Cooper [after- wards Sir Astley] informed me at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, that he had just seen a young man, about 18 years of age, who had taken, at 10 o’clock in the morning, no less than six ounces of Laudanum, the whole of which had remained on his stomach, and had brought on symptoms which appeared to threaten immediate disso- lution.” Mr. Cooper, who did not see him till five hours after the accident, had made him swallow a solution of one drachm and a half of sulphate of zinc, which caused him to vomit about an ounce and a half of fluid smelling strongly of Opium, but he had fallen into a state of complete insensibility. When Dr. Marcet saw him an hour later, ‘^his head was hanging lifeless on his breast, his eyes shut, and his countenance ghastly; his respi- ration slow and sonorous like apoplectic breathing; his hands cold; the pulse from 90 to 96, feeble and irregu- lar;” 15 grains of sulphate of copper were given; in](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21978360_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
