two ounces were retained altogether and caused only moderate griping, with considerable purging and flow of urine *. Resting on such facts as these Tourtelle, with some physicians in more recent times †, has maintained that nitre is not a worse poison than other saline laxatives; and some practitioners of the present day have consequently ventured to administer it for the cure of diseases, in the quantity of half an ounce at one dose. It is not easy to say, why these large doses are at times borne by the stomach without injury,-whether the cause is idiosyncrasy, or a constitutional insensibility engendered by disease, or a difference in the mode of administering the salt. But at all events, the facts which follow will leave no doubt that in general it is a dangerous and rapid poison in the dose of an

ounce.

Dr Alexander found that, in the quantity of a drachm or a drachm and a half, recently dissolved in four ounces of water, and repeated every ninety minutes, the third or fourth dose caused chilliness and stinging pains in the stomach and over the whole body; and these sensations became so severe with the fourth dose, that he considered it unsafe to attempt a fifth §.

Two cases which were actually fatal have been described in the Journal de Médecine for 1787, the one caused by one ounce, the other by an ounce and a half. In the latter the symptoms were those of the most violent cholera, and the patient died in two days and a half; in the former death took place in three hours only, and in addition to the symptoms remarked in the other there were convulsions and twisting of the mouth ||. In both the pulse failed at the wrist, and a great tendency to fainting prevailed for some time before death.

Similar effects have been remarked in several cases which have been followed by recovery.-A woman in the second month of pregnancy, immediately after taking a handful of nitre in solution, was attacked with pain in the stomach, swelling of the whole body and general pains; she then miscarried,

• Journal de Médecine, lxxiii. 22.

+ Tartra sur l'empoisonnement par l'acide nitrique, 136. London Med. Repository, xxiii. 523.

§ Experimental Essays, p. 114, 115.

¶ Souville in Journal de Médecine, 1xxiii. 19.

Laflize in Journ. de Méd. lxxi. 401.

and afterwards had the usual symptoms of gastritis and dysentery, united with great giddiness, ringing in the ears, general tremors and excessive chilliness. She seems to have made a narrow escape, as for three days the discharges by stool were profuse, and composed chiefly of blood and membranous flakes *. In the case of another female in the second month of pregnancy, described by Dr Butter, miscarriage did not take place, although the symptoms were very violent and lasting. The quantity taken was two ounces. The symptoms were first bloody vomiting, afterwards dysentery, which continued seven days; and on the tenth day there supervened a nervous affection exactly like chorea, and of two months' duration †. The effects of the poison in the latter period of this woman's illness tend to establish the existence of a secondary operation on the nervous system.—But this kind of action is still more strongly pointed out by the particulars of a case related by Dr Geiseler, in which the only disorder produced appeared to depend on derangement of the cerebral functions. A woman, after swallowing an ounce instead of Glauber's salt, lost the use of speech and the power of voluntary motion, became insensible, and was attacked with tetanic spasms. This state lasted till next day, when some amelioration was procured by copious sweating. It was not, however, till eight days after, that she recovered her speech, or the entire use of her mental faculties; and the palsy of the limbs continued two months. Her case resembles the account given by Orfila of the effects of nitre on animals.

SECTION III. Of the Morbid Appearances caused by

Nitrate of Potass.

The Morbid Appearances observed in man are solely those of violent inflammation of the stomach and intestines. In Laflize's case, which proved fatal in three hours, the stomach was distended, and the contents deeply tinged with blood; its peritonæal coat of a dark-red colour mottled with black spots; its villous coat very much inflamed and detached in several places.

• Alexander, Experimental Essays, p. 109.

+ Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ. xiv. 34.

Journal der praktischen Heilkunde, lvii. i. 124.

The liquid contents gave satisfactory evidence of nitre having been swallowed; for a portion evaporated to dryness deflagrated with burning charcoal. In Souville's patient, who lived sixty hours, the stomach was every where red, in many places checkered with black spots, and at the centre of one of these spots the stomach was perforated by a small aperture. The whole intestinal canal was also red.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF POISONING WITH LIME.

LIME, the last poison of the present groupe, is a substance of little interest to the toxicologist, as its activity is not great.

Its physical and chemical properties need not be minutely described. It is soluble, though sparingly, in water; and the solution turns the vegetable blues green, restores the purple of reddened litmus, gives a white precipitate with a stream of carbonic acid gas, and with oxalic acid a very insoluble precipitate, which is not redissolved by an excess of the test.

Its action is purely irritant. Orfila has found that a drachm and a half of unslaked lime, given to a little dog, caused vomiting and slight suffering for a day only, but that three drachms killed the same animal in five days, vomiting, languor, and whining being the only symptoms, and redness of the throat, gullet, and stomach, the only morbid appearances *.

Though a feeble poison, it has nevertheless proved fatal in the human subject. Gmelin takes notice of the case of a boy who swallowed some lime in an apple-pye, and died in nine days, affected with thirst, burning in the mouth, burning pain in the belly, and obstinate constipation t. A short account of a case of this kind of poisoning is also given by Balthazar Timæus. A young woman, afflicted with pica or depraved appetite, took to the eating of quicklime; and in conscquence she was attacked with pain and gnawing in the belly, sore throat, dryness of the mouth, insatiable thirst, difficult breathing and cough; but she recovered -It is well known that quick-lime also inflames the skin or even destroys its texture, apparently by withdrawing the water which forms a component part of all soft animal tissues. When thrown into the eyes it causes acute and obstinate ophthalmia, which may end in loss of sight. On this account it will belong, I presume, to the poisons included in the Scottish act against disfiguring or maiming with corrosives.

• Toxicol. Gén. i. 174.

Gmelin's Geschichte der Mineralischen Gifte, s. 252.

Timæi Casus Medicinales, lvii. c. 12.

CHAPTER IX.

OF POISONING WITH AMMONIA AND ITS SALTS.

THE second groupe of the order of Alkaline poisons, including ammonia with its salts, and the sulphuret of potass, have a double action on the system, analogous to that possessed by many metallic poisons. They are powerful irritants; but they produce besides, through the medium of the blood, a disorder of some part of the nervous system; and their remote is sometimes more dangerous than their local action. The nervous affection produced by ammonia and the sulphuret of potass closely resembles tetanus, and therefore depends probably on irritation of the spinal column.

Of the Chemical tests for the Ammoniacal Salts. Ammonia is when pure a gaseous body; but as commonly seen, it exists in solution in water, which dissolves it in large quantity. The solution has the usual effects of alkalis on vegetable colours, with the difference, however,―that the changes of colour are not permanent under the action of heat. It precipitates yellow, as potass does, with the chloride of platinum. It may at once be distinguished from other fluids by its peculiar pungent odour, which is possessed by no other substance except its carbonate.

Various Carbonates are known in chemistry, but the only one known in commerce or met with in the shops is the sesquicarbonate (Sub-carbonate,-Smelling Salt-Volatile SaltHartshorn.) It is solid, white, fibrous, and has the same odour as pure ammonia. Its solution differs little in physical properties from the pure liquid ammonia; but, unlike it, is precipitated by the salts of lime.

The Hydrochlorate-(muriate of ammonia-Sal ammoniac) is known by its solid, white, crystalline appearance; its ductility; its volatility; and by the effect of caustic potass and nitrate of silver, the former of which disengages an ammoniacal odour, while the latter causes in a solution of the salt a white precipitate, the chloride of silver.