The dose is 310 grain, and should invariably be administered by hypodermic injection.
In pneumonia and other acute disease, where the patient is liable to sudden collapse, a hypodermic injection of strychnine will often save the patient's life.
Chronic opium poisoning by the taking of laudanum - as in the familiar case of De Quincey - need not be considered here, as the hypodermic injection of morphine has almost entirely supplanted it.
Of the numerous preparations only two need be mentioned - the liquid extract (dose 10 minims to 2 drachms or more), and the hypodermic injection.
The separation of the alkaloids belongs rather to the earlier part of the 19th century, but the administration of these more accurate medications by means of hypodermic injection (see Therapeutics) belongs to the latter.
