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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    fast, and irregular. He liad never experienced symptoms such, as these before. Upon the same principle that we use opium in an over-excited and exhausted state of the brain, I prescribed fl. 5iij. of the succus conii, to be repeated at intervals of several hours, and enjoined perfect rest. This treatment was continued for six days. The emissions con- tinued at intervals during the first day of the treatment, and then ceased. At the end of a week he was perfectly recovered, and has continued in good health up to the present time, which is five months after the accident. The foregoing case leads me to speak of the influence of conium upon the sexual organs. I have given conium a full trial in every variety of cases of this kind. In those cases of exhaustion and irritability which arise from early self-abuse ; in those of troublesome irritation where the patient has been suddenly deprived of the legitimate means of gratifying his desires; and in those cases of erotic tendency that arise from some obscure irritation of the lumbar portion of the spinal cord, I have never known conium fail to give relief. It is very remarkable that, while it possesses such a decided in- fluence over the morbid conditions of the sexual function, conium should be incapable of depressing the natural func- tion. The ancients believed that it not only repressed natural desire but actually caused atrophy of the testes and mammse, which latter, of course, implies atrophy of the ovaries also. This does not accord with my own experience, from which I have been led to conclude that conium, in doses short of causing a poisonous action, has no more power to arrest or depress natural sexual desire than it has of arresting or depressing the respiratory function. Conium in medicinal doses can only influence, as I have before observed, morbid conditions of the spinal cord, and in doing so leaves its natural function intact. In Dysmenorrhoea, Ovarian irritation, and Ovarian tumour, I have been unable to afl*ord any relief by means of conium. Many such cases, however, are chiefly if not entirely due to congestion. In those which can be traced to irritation of the lumbar nerves, we may reasonably expect conium to be of service, and give it a fair trial accordingly. Upon the E 2