Note 1690 — Chapter XXVII · OF POISONING WITH OPIUM.

Repertorium für die Pharmacie, xxxi. 174.—Professor Orfila, in the last edition of his Toxicologie Gén. [1843, ii. 253], has attacked in no very measured terms this opinion of Professor Buchner and myself. But, although he professes to give a literal translation of the passage above, he has translated it so incorrectly as wholly to misrepresent our opinion. The close of the paragraph, “chemical analysis must often fail to detect opium where there could be no doubt of its having been administered in large quantity,” is rendered into French by the Parisian Professor in these words,—“l’analyse chimique, propre à constater l’existence de l’opium, est souvent inutile, même dans le cas ou il existe une grande quantité de cette substance,”—which is a very different proposition. Orfila clearly overrates the utility of the process for detecting opium, both in this criticism and in his whole observations on the subject, by losing sight of the tendency of absorption to remove the poison beyond reach.