by
a child of six, followed by vomiting and rapid recovery. There was no
diarrhea in this case. Wood quotes Cowan in mentioning the case of a
child of four, who in two days recovered from a teaspoonful of croton
oil taken on a full stomach. Adams saw recovery in an adult after
ingestion of the same amount. There is recorded an instance of a woman
who took about an ounce, and, emesis being produced three-quarters of
an hour afterward by mustard, she finally recovered. There is a record
in which so small a dose as three minims is supposed to have killed a
child of thirteen months. According to Wood, Giacomini mentions a case
in which 24 grains of the drug proved fatal in as many hours.

Castor oil is usually considered a harmless drug, but the castor bean,
from which it is derived, contains a poisonous acrid principle, three
such beans having sufficed to produce death in a man. Doubtless some of
the instances in which castor oil has produced symptoms similar to
cholera are the results of the administration of contaminated oil.

The untoward effects of opium and its derivatives are quite numerous
Gaubius treated an old woman in whom, after three days, a single grain
of opium produced a general desquamation of the epidermis; this
peculiarity was not accidental, as it was verified on several other
occasions. Hargens speaks of a woman in whom the slightest bit of opium
in any form produced considerable salivation. Gastric disturbances are
quite common, severe vomiting being produced by minimum doses; not
infrequently, intense mental confusion, vertigo, and headache, lasting
hours and even days, sometimes referable to the frontal region and
sometimes to the occipital, are seen in certain nervous individuals
after a dose of from 1/4 to 5/6 gr. of opium. These symptoms were
familiar to the ancient physicians, and, according to Lewin, Tralles
reports an observation with reference to this in a man, and says
regarding it in rather unclassical Latin: "... per multos dies
ponderosissimum caput circumgestasse." Convulsions are said to be
observed after medicinal doses of opium. Albers states that twitching
in the tendons tremors of the hands, and even paralysis, have been
noticed after the ingestion of opium in even ordinary doses. The
"pruritus opii," so familiar to physicians, is spoken of in the older
writings. Dioscorides, Paulus Aegineta, and nearly all the writers of
the last century describe this symptom as an annoying and