NARCOTICS

  1. If you are smoking ganja, you first watch the curls of smoke. In other moment, you feel yourself crouched together in the bowl of your pipe smoked by yourself at the other end.

    -M. Baudelaire

  2. Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know- I have been taking it for years.

    -Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968), US stage and screen actress

  3. Thou hast the keys of Paradise,
    Oh, just, subtle and mighty Opium!

    -Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859): English essayist and critic

  4. "H" is for heaven: "H" is for hell: "H" is for heroin. In the life of the addict, these three meanings of "H" seem inextricably intertwined.

    -Isador Chein, 1964 (Reproduced in "Historical Medical Classics involving new drugs, by John C. Krantz, Jr. Ph.D. on page 121)

  5. That is the nectar, you call it a gum.
    Ah! The lean tree whence such gold oozings come.

    -R. Browning (Cited in "Recent Advances in Forensic Pathology" edited by Francis E. Camps, J.& A. Churchill Ltd., 1969, on page 204, in Chapter 12 entitled "Drugs of Dependence")

NEGATIVE AUTOPSY

  1. A higher rate of negative conclusions will originate from older and more experienced pathologists than from juniors.

    -Bernard Knight (Forensic Pathology, 2nd Edition, page 47)

    (N.B. Knight follows up this “ paradoxical quote” with this interesting statement: The younger pathologist is often uneasy about failing to provide a cause of death, feeling that it reflects upon his ability, whereas the more grizzled doctor, enjoying the security of tenure and equality with - or even seniority over - his clinical and legal colleagues, is less inhibited in his admissions of ignorance when the cause of death remains obscure.

    I have a different opinion - and experience - though ( I am bald, not grizzled however). Frequently when I fail to find a cause of death, with my students standing over my head, I feel very embarrassed, and tend to offer a cause of death, knowing it to be wrong. On the contrary a younger pathologist - certainly in my hospital - is very comfortable - even happy - in facing an obscure death. Because he has the facility of rushing to his senior colleagues and asking for their opinion. An added pleasure for him might be the possible confusion causing to the senior in the process! Readers' opinions on this subject are welcome. Please Email me by clicking here.)