Apomorphine Synonyms

The treatment is to wash out the stomach or give such an emetic as apomorphine, and, when the stomach has been emptied, to administer demulcents such as white of egg or mucilage.

Distilled with zinc dust morphine yields phenanthrene, pyridine and quinoline; dehydration gives, under certain conditions, apomorphine, C17H17N02, a white amorphous substance, readily soluble in alcohol, either and chloroform.

Often it relieves vomiting, though in a few persons it may cause vomiting, but in far less degree than apomorphine, which is a powerful emetic. Opium has a more marked diaphoretic action than morphine, and is much less certain as a hypnotic and analgesic. There are a few therapeutic indications for the use of opium rather than morphine, but they are far less important than those which make the opposite demand.

For this purpose the best emetic is apomorphine, which may be injected subcutaneously in a dose of about one-tenth of a grain.

But apomorphine is not always to be obtained, and even if it be administered it may fail, since the gastric wall is often paralysed in opium poisoning, so that no emetic can act.