When
deprived of their accustomed dose of morphin the sufferings which
these patients experience are terrific, and they pursue all sorts
of deceptions to enable them to get their enslaving drug.
Patients have been known to conceal tubes in their mouths, and
even swallow them, and the authors know of a fatal instance in
which a tube of hypodermic tablets of the drug was found
concealed in the rectum.
The administration of such an inert substance as the infusion of
orange-peel has been sufficient to invariably produce nervous
excitement in a patient afflicted with carcinoma.
Sonnenschein refers to a case of an infant of five weeks who died
from the effects of one phosphorous match head containing only
1/100 grain of phosphorus. There are certain people who by reason
of a special susceptibility cannot tolerate phosphorus, and the
exhibition of it causes in them nausea, oppression, and a feeling
of pain in the epigastric region, tormina and tenesmus,
accompanied with diarrhea, and in rare cases jaundice, sometimes
lasting several months. In such persons 1/30 grain is capable of
causing the foregoing symptoms. In 1882 a man was admitted to
Guy's Hospital, London, after he had taken half of a sixpenny pot
of phosphorous paste in whiskey, and was subsequently discharged
completely recovered.
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