p. 10 | MORPHINE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Apr 2, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 14.

MORPHINE.

In a trial in this city the counsel, cross-examining a medical witness, read a statement from a work of Dr. Da Costa, of Philadelphia, which said that one-sixth of a grain of morphine could cause death if kidney trouble existed, even if this disease was latent, so that the patient did not know that he had it. He read from another work, by Prof. Alexander S. Taylor, a statement that "some persons have a peculiar intolerance for morphine, and may be killed by an ordinary medical dose, which would not harm an ordinary person." The witness admitted it.

One of the greatest allopathic physicians said: "If I were convinced that I would die without morphine I would take it; not otherwise. If I were convinced that a patient would die without it, I would administer it; not otherwise." Yet it is actually used as a domestic medicine by many families. One of our pastors had the melancholy duty to conduct the funeral services of two children, whom he believed, without being able to prove, were unintentionally killed by their mother, who administered morphine because she could not bear to see them in such pain. The physician who was called in one of the cases was strongly of that opinion, but, not being certain, shrank from having a legal investigation. An error in administering it to one of our ministers, an alumnus of Wesleyan University, drove him into a wild delirium, in which he dashed his head against the wall of his room, with fatal result.

Many popular soothing syrups have in them the potency of death, and soothe the unconscious infant out of life, or, if it survives, leave it with a nervous system which becomes a real Pandora's box.—N. Y. Christian Advocate.