[623] Orfila, t. i. p. 108.
§ 612. Post-mortem Appearances.—Inflammation of the stomach and intestines are the signs usually found in man and animals.
§ 613. Chemical Analysis.—The oil may be separated from the contents of the stomach by ether. After evaporation of the ether, the blistering or irritant properties of the oil should be essayed by placing a droplet on the inside of the arm.
§ 614. The Toxalbumin of Castor-Oil Seeds.—In castor-oil seeds, besides the well-known purgative oil, there exists an albuminous body intensely poisonous, which has been carefully investigated by Stillmark,[624] under the direction of Kobert.[625] Injected into the circulation it is more poisonous than strychnine, prussic acid, or arsenic; and since the pressed seeds are without taste or smell, this poison has peculiar dangers of its own.
It is essentially a blood poison, coagulating the blood.
The blood, if carefully freed from all fibrin, is yet again brought to coagulation by a small amount of this body.
If castor-oil seeds are eaten, a portion of the poison is destroyed by the digestive processes; a part is not thus destroyed, but is absorbed, and produces in the blood-vessels its coagulating property. Where this takes place, ulcers naturally form, because isolated small areas are deprived of their blood supply. These areas thus becoming dead, may be digested by the gastric or intestinal fluids, and thus, weeks after, death may be produced. The symptoms noted are nausea, vomiting, colic, diarrhœa, tenesmus, thirst, hot skin, frequent pulse, sweats, headache, jaundice, and death in convulsions or from exhaustion. Animals may be made immune by feeding them carefully with small doses, gradually increased.
The post-mortem appearances are ulceration in the stomach and intestines. In animals the appearances of hæmorrhagic gastro-enteritis, with diffuse nephritis, hæmorrhages in the mesentery and so forth have been found.
§ 615. Toxalbumin of Abrus.—A toxalbumin is found in the Abrus precatorius (Jequirity) which causes quite similar effects and symptoms. That it is not identical is proved by the fact that, though animals may become immune by repeated doses of Jequirity against “Abrin,” the similar substance from castor-oil seeds only confers immunity against the toxalbumin of those seeds, and not against abrin; and similarly abrin confers no immunity against the castor albumin. Either of these substances applied to the conjunctiva produces coagulation in the vessels and a secondary inflammation, to which in the case of jequirity has been given the name of “jequirity-ophthalmia.”[626]
[626] Heinr. Hellin, Der giftige Eiweisskorper-Abrin u. seine Wirkung auf das Blut. Inaug.-Diss., Dorpat., 1891.
The general effect of these substances, and, above all, the curious fact that a person may acquire by use a certain immunity from otherwise fatal doses is so similar to poisonous products evolved in the system of persons suffering from infectious fevers, that they have excited of late years much interest, and a study of their methods of action will throw light upon many diseased processes.
At present there are no chemical means of detecting the presence of the toxalbumins mentioned. Should they be ever used for criminal purposes, other evidence will have to be obtained.
§ 616. Ictrogen.—Various lupins, e.g., Lupinus luteus, L. angustifolius, L. thermis, L. linifolius, L. hirsutus, contain a substance of which nothing chemically is known, save that it may be extracted by weakly alkaline water, and which has been named “ictrogen”; this must not be confused with the alkaloid of lupins named “lupinine,” a bitter tasting substance. In large doses a nerve poison. Ictrogen has the unusual property of acting much like phosphorus. It causes yellow atrophy of the liver, and produces the following symptoms:—Intense jaundice; at first enlargement of the liver, afterwards contraction; somnolence, fever, paralysis. The urine contains albumen and the constituents of the bile. After death there is found to be parenchymatous degeneration of the heart, kidneys, muscles, and liver. If the animal has suffered for some time the liver may be cirrhotic.
Hitherto the cases of poisoning have been confined to animals. Many thousands of sheep and a few horses and deer have, according to Kobert, died in Germany from eating lupin seeds. Further information upon the active principles of lupins may be obtained by referring to the following treatises:—G. Schneidemuhl, Die lupinen Krankheit der Schafe; Vorträge f. Thierärzte. Ser. 6, Heft. 4, Leipzig, 1883. C. Arnold and G. Schneidemuhl, Vierter Beitrag zur Klarstellung der Ursache u. des Wesens der Lupinose, Luneburg, 1883; Julius Löwenthal, Ueber die physiol. u. toxicol. Wirkungen der Lupinenalkaloide, Inaug.-Diss., Königsberg, 1888.
§ 617. Cotton seeds, used as an adulterant to linseed cake, &c., have caused the death of sheep and calves. Cotton seeds contain a poison of which nothing is chemically known, save that it is poisonous. It produces anæmia and cachexia in animals when given in small repeated doses.
After death the changes are, under these circumstances, confined to the kidney; these organs showing all the signs of nephritis. If, however, the animal has eaten a large quantity of cotton seeds, then there is gastro-enteritis, as well as inflammation of the kidneys.
§ 618. Various species of vetchlings, such as L. sativus, L. cicera, L. clymenum, are poisonous, and have caused an epidemic malady in parts of Spain, Africa, France, and Italy, among people who have eaten the seeds. The symptoms are mainly referable to the nervous system, causing a transverse myelitis and paraplegia. In this country it is chiefly known as a poisonous food for horses; the last instance of horse-poisoning by lathyrus was that of horses belonging to the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company.[627] The company bought some Indian peas; these peas were found afterwards to consist mainly of the seeds of Lathyrus sativus, for out of 335 peas no fewer than 325 were the seeds of Lathyrus. The new peas were substituted for the beans the horses had been having previously on the 2nd November, and the horses ate them up to the 2nd December. Soon after the new food had been given, the horses began to stumble and fall about, not only when at work, but also in their stalls; to these symptoms succeeded a paralysis of the larynx; this paralysis was in some cases accompanied by a curious weird screaming, which once having been heard could never be forgotten; there was also gasping for breath and symptoms of impending suffocation. A few of the horses were saved by tracheotomy. Some died of suffocation; one horse beat its brains out in its struggles for breath; 127 horses were affected; 12 died.
[627] Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company v. Weston & Co., Times, July 17, 1894.
The above train of symptoms has also been recorded in similar cases; added to which paralysis of the lower extremities is frequent. After death atrophy of the laryngeal muscles, wasting of the nervus recurrens, and atrophy of the ganglion cells of the vagus nucleus as also of the multipolar ganglion cells in the anterior horns of the spinal cord have been found.
The active principle of the seeds has not been satisfactorily isolated. The symptoms suggest the action of a toxalbumin. Teilleux found a resin acid; Louis Astier a volatile alkaloid, and he explains the fact that the seeds, after being heated, are no longer poisonous by the dissipation of this alkaloid.
§ 619. Arum maculatum, the common cuckoo-pint, flowering in April and May, and frequent in the hedges of this country, is extremely poisonous. Bright red succulent attractive berries are seen on a single stalk, the rest of the plant having rotted away, and these berries are frequently gathered by children and eaten. The poison belongs to the class of acrid irritants, but its real nature remains for investigation.
Some of the species of the same natural order growing in the tropics are far more intensely poisonous.
§ 620. The Black Bryony.—Tamus communis, the black bryony, a common plant by the wayside, flowering in May and June, possesses poisonous berries, which have been known to produce death, with symptoms of gastro-enteritis. In smaller doses the berries are stated to produce paralysis of the lower extremities.[628]
[628] Contagne, Lyon med., xlvi., 1884, 239.
§ 621. The Locust Tree.—The Robinia pseudo-acacia, a papilionaceous tree, contains a poison in the leaves and in the bark. R. Coltmann [629] has recorded a case in China of a woman, twenty-four years of age, who, at a time of famine, driven by hunger, ate the leaves of this tree. She became ill within forty-eight hours, with high fever; the tongue swelled and there was much erysipelatous-like infiltration of the tissues of the mouth; later the whole body became swollen. There was constipation and so much œdema of the eyelids that the eyeballs were no longer visible. Recovery took place without special treatment. Power and Cambier[630] have separated from the bark an albumose, which is intensely poisonous, and is probably the cause of the symptoms detailed.
§ 622. Male Fern.—An ethereal extract of Aspidium Filix mas is used as a remedy against tape worm.
Poullson[631] has collected up to the year 1891 sixteen cases of poisoning by male fern; from which it would appear that 7 to 10 grms. (103 to 154 grains) of the extract may be fatal to a child, and 45 grms. (rather more than 11⁄2 oz.) to an adult. The active principle seems to be filicic acid and the ethereal oil. Filicic acid, under the influence of saponifying agencies, breaks up into butyric acid and phloroglucin.
[631] Arch. exp. P., Bd. 29.
The symptoms produced are pain, heaviness of the limbs, faintness, somnolence, dilatation of the pupil, albuminuria, convulsions, lock-jaw, and collapse. In animals there have also been noticed salivation, amaurosis, unsteady gait, dragging of the hind legs, dyspnœa, and paralysis of the breathing centres. The post-mortem appearances which have been found are as follows:—Redness and swelling with hæmorrhagic spots of the mucous membranes of the stomach and intestines; acute œdema of the brain and spinal cord with petechia in the meninges; the kidneys inflamed, the liver and spleen congested, and the lungs œdematous.
There is no characteristic reaction for male fern; the research most likely to be successful is to attempt to separate from an ethereal extract filicic acid, and to decompose it into butyric acid and phloroglucin; the latter tinges red a pine splinter moistened with hydrochloric acid.