USES FOR OPIUM.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XIII, 5 October 1895, Page 409

USES FOR OPIUM.

Opium is given internally for the relief of pain and spasm of all kinds. Thus it is useful in cancer and ulcer of the stomach, and an inflammation of that organ occurring in those who habitually indulge too freely in stimulants. It will give relief in all forms of colic, even when dependent on the passage of a calculus or gallstone. Laudanum is nearly always at hand, or is readily procurable, and a dose of from twenty to twenty-five drops in a glass of water will, in the case of an adult, usually relieve pain, from whatever cause arising. It is often advantageous to add fifteen drops of chloric ether to the mixture, but it is not essential. In nearly all forms of diarrhoea, the administration of opium proves beneficial. It is useful not only in the ordinary summer diarrhoea, but in those severer forms which ac-

company the progress of typhoid fever, dysentery, ami other organic diseases. It may be administered alone, as laudanum, or preferably in combination with some astringent, as we have it in the diarrhcea mixture.

On the other hand, drop or half-drop doses of laudanum, given hourly or oftener, will prove beneficial in an obstinately confined state of the bowels. In all cases of obstruction of the bowels, when ordinary purgatives have failed to produce an evacuation, it is desirable to resort to the use of opium. In some forms of cough, opium, or its alkaloid morphine, may be given with great advantage.

Its use is indicated in nasty little ‘ hacketing ’ coughs, and when the cough is violent and frequent, but unaccompanied by expectoration. Opium should not be given when there is much expectoration, for it may cause profound sleep, during which the phlegm, not being coughed up, will accumulate in the chest, and may cause suffocation.

Rudyard Kii ling has written a play, and Beerbohm Tree is going to produce it at the Haymarket, in London. Tree heard of Kipling's play while he was in America ; in fact, it was Rudyard himself who told him all about it. The name of the piece has not yet been announced. Tree will probably do it after he has presented ‘ Trilby. ’