Lettuce, from which Lactucarium is prepared, resembles Opium in its action, but is neither so powerful nor so efficient. Nutmeg and Hops have proved Soporifics when given in large doses.
The relief of pain, and the production of sleep, are about the commonest and the most grateful of the offices which fall to the lot of the physician; and in either case Opium, or one of its preparations, may be said to be indispensable. But a certain caution and care must be exercised, even in the administration of this most useful remedy. (_Vide Art. Opium_, Chap. IV.)
These medicines are all produced by the natural order Solanaceæ. Of all Narcotics they approach the nearest to Sedatives. Their only stimulating action is to produce at the very first a slight and evanescent febrile condition,--a quick pulse and heat of skin,--which never lasts long, and is sometimes overlooked.
They are not Soporific. Their action is soon manifested by an anodyne operation, and a sedative influence on the heart and circulation. For this double action they are employed in medicine, being used in painful disorders, fevers, and inflammations. As anodynes they are not so efficacious as Opium, but their action is not followed by constipation, or by a diminution in any of the secretions.
They all dilate the pupil of the eye. Belladonna produces a peculiar dryness of the throat, and has been known to cause an erythematous eruption. Stramonium appears especially to control the respiratory nerves, and is thus used in Asthma, where there is a spasmodic circular contraction of the smaller bronchial tubes. Lobelia, a medicine of the first order, possesses a somewhat similar power. The action of the remedies of this third order of Narcotics is distinguished by the production of delirium when they are given in large doses.
Let us again assume the threefold division of the mental functions, to which allusion has already been made. Inebriants impair equally the mind, volition, and the five senses. Soporifics extinguish for awhile both volition and the senses, but may leave the mind alone. In delirium these functions are not thus impaired and held in subjection, but they are excited and led astray. The mind is occupied intently upon imaginary fancies; unreal objects and hallucinations are presented to the senses. So that Deliriants, in this peculiar phase of their action, tend to excite the mind and the volition, and to delude or derange the senses.
