While exhibiting especial tolerance
from peculiar disposition and long habit, Thomas De Quincey, the
celebrated English litterateur, makes a statement in his
"Confessions" that with impunity he took as much as 320 grains of
opium a day, and was accustomed at one period of his life to call
every day for "a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without
sugar," to use his own expression, after the manner a toper would
call for a "hot-Scotch."
The individuality noted in the assimilation and the ingestion of
drugs is functional as well as anatomic. Numerous cases have been
seen by all physicians. The severe toxic symptoms from a whiff of
cocain-spray, the acute distress from the tenth of a grain of
morphin, the gastric crises and profuse urticarial eruptions
following a single dose of quinin,--all are proofs of it. The
"personal equation" is one of the most important factors in
therapeutics, reminding us of the old rule, "Treat the patient,
not the disease."
The idiosyncrasy may be either temporary or permanent, and there
are many conditions that influence it. The time and place of
administration; the degree of pathologic lesion in the subject;
the difference in the physiologic capability of individual organs
of similar nature in the same body; the degree of human vitality
influencing absorption and resistance; the peculiar epochs of
life; the element of habituation, and the grade and strength of
the drug, influencing its virtue,--all have an important bearing
on untoward action and tolerance of poisons.
Pages:
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986