8vo. (4), II pp, 78 pp, (2). Bound in neat modern quarter black calf over marbled boards. An excellent copy, clean and fresh. Very rare sole edition of this early study of the effects of morphine, printed in the wake of the first reported poisoning by that substance in 1822. The French physician Edme Castaing was convicted by a Parisian jury of murdering his lawyer with morphine acetate and had been executed on December 6, 1823. The present Recherches, published the following year, expressly address the unknown dangers of large doses of this new miracle-drug. First isolated in 1804 but not introduced for public use until 1817, morphine acetate (soluble in water, for oral use) was evidently already available in pharmacies in France by the 1820s. Commercial production would begin en masse in 1827, fueling the early growth of Merck. In the present experiments, three young physicians injected large doses of morphine into oesophagi of cats and the exposed brains of dogs, bringing about alternative bouts of paralysis and violent convulsions. They also conclude that the substance has no effect on the lining of the stomach, and that it is difficult to detect forensically. OCLC shows one US copy, at Harvard. * OCLC 38387069. On the authors, cf for example Valérie Guillouf, François Leuret (1797-1851): un mal-aimé de la psychiatrie (Caen, 1995).