If Mr. Edgerton's digestive apparatus is still as intolerant as at the
commencement of the attack which hurried him to Lord's Island, we may
hope for a marked mitigation of this symptom, in the use of the
battery by passing a mild current transversely through him in the
region of the solar plexus. As soon as it is possible for his stomach
to retain any thing we administer a bolus of _capsicum_,
compounded of five grains of the powder with any simple addition like
mucilage and and liquorice to make it a coherent mass. The remaining
nausea and irritability will in great likelihood be speedily relieved
as by magic, and with these will disappear some of the most
distressing cerebral symptoms--the horror and frenzy or comatose
apathy among them. In few cases will a patient reach the Island in
time for the advantageous use of _belladonna_. That is a direct
antidote--exerting its function in antagonism to the earlier toxical
effects of the opium. In cases where a single overdose has worked the
difficulty and produced the coma which Mr. Edgerton's now resembles,
it may be given to an old _habitué_ of the drug with as good
advantage as to a person whose overdose is his first experience of
opium. It is of especial value where the absorbents have carried the
excess beyond the reach of an emetic, any time, indeed, within fifteen
or twenty hours after the overdose, when sulphate of zinc and the
stomach-pump have failed to bring the poison. If our patient on the
Island has taken his overdose so recently, and it seems still worth
while to act by antidote, we shall be obliged to get over the
difficulty presented by his stomach's lack of retention by
administering our belladonna in the form of _atropin_ in solution
as a hypodermic injection. The many eminent researches of late made in
this interesting method of administering remedies, and the
practitioner's own judgment, must guide him as to the proportions of
his dose--whether one-fortieth grain, one-twentieth, or larger. Of
this operation, with opium-eaters, I have seen several most successful
instances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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