On the Subcutaneous Injection of Morphia in Insanity

Extract

The cases which one generally meets in an asylum often diner in no small degree from those of ordinary practice. To ensure sleep in a patient under delirium tremens, or other such short-lived malady, is to establish cure at once, and the result melts into the satisfactory finish of “cured in a few days thereafter.” Fortunately or unfortunately, such bright prospects are not often held out to asylum practitioners, but yet the efficient means for procuring sleep are frequently not less clamant. In many of our cases there is no hope of recovery, even although sleep of the soundest nature was obtained; nevertheless, it is no mean aim to command such for one who, during a paroxysm, passes night after night ill a morbid condition, whether wildly shouting and beating at the walls and doors he disturb the rest of all, and prostrate himself, or with a quieter demeanour remain in bed with unclosed lids in melancholy whispering. The boon conferred on the household in the former, and on the patients in both cases, is sufficiently obvious; and it is for such chronic, not less than the acute cases, that I would recommend the subcutaneous injection. We cannot, indeed, say in such cases that the patient went out cured shortly after, for that they may never do; but the comfort and advantage resulting from their successful narcotism must be familiar to all in our department. Of acute cases I need say little; in them the state of matters is conspicuous enough.