NARCOTICS (from Greek vapKeDv, to be numb), substances which have the property of stupefying. In small (medicinal) doses they either quiet undue irritability of the nervous system, producing sleep and relieving pain or spasm, or they excite or stimulate the normal irritability. Opium and alcohol, for example, are sometimes used as "bracers." Narcotics are too frequently used for slight ailments or fan cied ones because the repeated or habitual use of small doses is dangerous, as it is apt to ex cite a craving for and the use of larger or poisonous doses. (See Poisorrs). Poisonous doses produce stupor, coma and sometimes con vulsions and death. Though the effects of most of the narcotics resemble more or less those of opium each narcotic affects the system in a peculiar way. Belladonna, for example, dries the throat, dims the vision, dilates the pupils of the eyes (opium contracts them), and produces delirium. Some narcotics produce constipation, others do not. Some act prin cipally upon the brain, others on the alimentary canal or bronchial tubes. The principal
narcotics are opium (with its alkaloids, such as morphia, codeine and thebaia, and preparations of it — paregoric, laudanum, etc.), belladonna, camphor, hyoscyamus or henbane, caffeine, chloral hydrate, alcohol, Indian hemp, hops, bromide of potassium and stramonium. There is also a group of chemical organic compounds which are narcotics, such as paraldehyde, sul phonal and trional. Narcotics should be used with extreme caution, as the susceptibility to their poisonous effects varies in different per sons. Of late years the market has been flooded with so-called paincures, carminatives, cordials, soothing-syrups, etc., warranted to be harmless, but which are in fact narcotics, in mixtures more or less agreeable to the taste, but none the less liable to do harm. Children are more susceptible to the influence of narcotics than adults, hence the risk of giving them to children is greater. See ANESTHETICS; ANALGESICS ; COAL TAR ; HYPNOTICS ; TOBACCO.