The old vegetable neurotics : hemlock, opium, belladonna and henbane; their physiological action and therapeutical use, alone and in combination being the Gulstonian Lectures of 1868, extended and including a complete examination of the active constituents of opium / by John Harley.

  • Harley, John, 1833-1921.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The old vegetable neurotics : hemlock, opium, belladonna and henbane; their physiological action and therapeutical use, alone and in combination being the Gulstonian Lectures of 1868, extended and including a complete examination of the active constituents of opium / by John Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wears away, a dose which will be followed by no appreciable effect in the early morning, will produce decided symptoms in the evening, and vice versa. 2. Those leading a sedentary inactive life are more readily affected by conium than those of active habits. A delicate person of active habits will therefore bear a larger dose of hemlock than one possessing abundance of strength with but little energy. 3. An active restless child will often take, with scarcely any appreciable effect, a dose of conium sufficient to paralyse an adult of indolent habits; and such as would reduce a powerful muscular man to a tottering condition, and force him to assume the recumbent position, and retain it for a quarter of an hour or more. (See cases 1, 9, and 16.) 4. The same rule applies to children themselves; to pro- duce a given effect, a dull inactive child requires only half the quantity that a lively, active one does. The general inference from these observations is that the dose of conium must be proportioned, not to the muscular strength of the individual, but to the degree of his motor activity, functions which the operation of conium indicate to be so far distinct from each other. Indeed, it appears that by means of conium we may comparatively measure the bodily activity of the individual. Upon the cerebrum hemlock is powerless. I have induced its full physiological action again and again hundreds of times, in at least a hundred different individuals of all ages, and have never been able to recognise the least narcotic, nor directly hypnotic, effects. If sleep followed complete repose of the muscular system as a necessary consequence, then there would be no more powerful or direct hypnotic than hemlock. But other con- ditions over which this drug has no control are required to procure sleep. In reducing the motor centres to a state of perfect repose hemlock powerfully predisposes the brain for sleep—brings it within its reach, so to speak, but there leaves it. If indeed the imagination should happen to.be dull, or the ideas, as in childhood, few, simple, and superficial, the brain may accept the invitation, and partake of an influence.