1. Small funnel-shaped tube for testing minute portions of liquids.
2. Apparatus for the distillation of fluids suspected to contain acids, one-seventh the natural size.
3. Tube for reducing very small portions of arsenic or mercury. The figure is of half the natural size. The ball may be blown larger, if the material to be reduced is bulky.
4. A small glass funnel for introducing the material into the tube Fig. 1, without soiling its inside.
5. The ordinary apparatus for disengaging sulphuretted-hydrogen. The funnel must be a little longer than the emerging tube. The fluid should not be at any time much higher than in the figure, in order to secure the operator against its effervescing up into the emerging tube. The figure is a fourth of the natural size.
6. Instrument for washing down scanty precipitates on filters. It is a thin bottle capable of standing heat—half-filled with water, which may be boiled on occasion,—and having its cork pierced with a small tube drawn at its outer end to a very fine bore. The breath is impelled into the bottle, and, the bottle being then reversed, a very fine stream issues with great force.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 6.
7. Tubes of natural size for collecting small portions of mercury by the process, p. 300.
8. Pipette, one-fourth the natural size, for removing by suction fluids lying over precipitates. Some have a rectangular bend in the upper part, by means of which the operator sees better the point of the instrument when in action; but such pipettes are difficult to clean. That represented in the figure is easily cleaned with a feather.
9. Apparatus for reducing the sulphurets of some metals by a stream of hydrogen. A, the vessel with zinc and diluted sulphuric acid, the latter of which may be renewed by the funnel B. C, a ball on the emerging tube to prevent the liquid thrown up by the effervescence from passing forward. D, E, corks by which C and G are fitted into F, the tube which contains the sulphuret at F. G, the exit-tube for the sulphuretted-hydrogen, plying into a vessel containing acetate of lead. When the hydrogen has passed long enough to expel all the air, the spirit-lamp flame is applied at F; and when sulphuretted-hydrogen is formed, the lead solution is blackened. The figure is one-third the size of the apparatus.
For Description of Figures 10 and 11, see p. 212.
Fig. 7.
Fig. 8.
Fig. 9.
Fig. 10.
Fig. 11.
1. Orfila and Ollivier, Archives Générales de Médecine, x. 360.
2. Philosophical Transactions, 1811, 186.
3. Experiments on Opium, 1795, reprinted in his Treatise on Fevers, iv. 697.
4. Essay on the Operation of poisonous agents on the living body, 1829, p. 63.
5. Edin. Phys. and Lit. Essays, iii. 311.
6. Researches sur l’Acide Hydrocyanique, 1819, p. 179.
7. Experimental Inquiry on poisoning with oxalic acid. By Dr. Coindet and myself.—Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xix. passim.
8. Philosophical Transactions, 1811, p. 184.
9. Annales de Chimie et de Physique, vi. 349.
10. Report of the Trial of Freeman for the murder of Judith Buswell, London Medical Gazette, viii. 796–8.
11. See subsequently the chapter on Hydrocyanic acid.
12. Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, p. 18.
13. Annales de Chim. et de Phys. xxvi. 54.
14. Philosophical Transactions, 1811, p. 182.
15. Trans. Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, xiii. 393.
16. Zeitschrift für die Physiologie, iii. i. 81.
17. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, liii. 35, and lvi. 412.
18. Archiv. für Anatomie und Physiologie, iv. 192.
19. Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ. liii. 46.
20. Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ. xix. 335.
21. Bull. de l’Acad. Roy. de Méd. iii. 426, et passim.
22. Edin. Phys. and Lit. Essays, iii. 334.
23. Philosophical Transactions, 1811, 198; and Archiv. für Anatomie und Physiologie, iv. 192.
24. Sur le Mechanisme de l’Absorption, 1809; republished, in Journ. de Physiol. i. 26.
25. Recherches sur l’Acide Hydrocyanique, 180.
26. Revue Médicale, 1827, i. 515.
27. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xix. 173.
28. Diss. Inaug. de Venenatis acidi Borussici effectibus. Tubingæ, 1805.
29. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, liii. 45.
30. Journal des Progrès des Sciences Méd. 1827, iii. 121.
31. Essay on the Operation of Poisonous Agents on the Living Body.
32. Essay, &c. pp. 75, 76.
33. Essay, &c. pp. 69, 71.
34. Ibidem, pp. 81, 87.
35. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, liii. 35.
36. Ed. Med. and Surg. Journal, lvi. 412.
37. Philosophical Transactions, 1841, p. 186. When death begins with any other organ but the heart, the heart remains irritable for some time after, and contains black blood in all its cavities.
38. Ib. p. 196.
39. Diss. Inaug. de Venenis Mineralibus. Edinburgi, 1813.
40. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xix. passim.
41. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, li. 330; liv. 339; lvi. 104. The Hæmadynamometer is an instrument invented by M. Poiseulle, which, when communicating with the interior of a blood-vessel, indicates the force of the circulation by the pressure of the blood on a column of mercury.
42. Mémoire sur l’Emétique—Bulletins de la Société Philomatique, 1812–13, p. 361.
43. Orfila, Toxicologie Générale, i. 258.
44. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, lvi. 104, and other papers there quoted above.
45. Ibid. liv. 121.
46. Ibid. li. 344.
47. Emmert, Archiv. für Anatomie und Physiologie, i. l. 180. See also the Article False Angustura.
48. Transactions of the Roy. Soc. of Edinburgh, xiii.
49. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, li. 330, liv. 339, lvi. 104.
50. Archives Gén. de Med. Nov. 1839, and Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, lvi. 106.
51. Ibidem, lvi. 123 and 422.
52. Ibid. xix. 326, 327.
53. Die Wirkung der Arzneimittel und Gifte, i. 278.
54. London Med. Gazette, xiv. 63.
55. Recherches sur l’Acide Hydrocyanique, 140.
56. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xix. 330.
57. Journal de Physiologie, iv. 285.
58. Giornale di Fisica, ix. 458.
59. These views regarding the decomposition of poisons, were suggested to me in 1823 by my friend Dr. Coindet, Junior, of Geneva.
60. It is not any part of the object of this work to enter into the history of toxicology, more especially in early times. But it may be well here to state, that the claim which has been made by some for Dr. Barry, of having discovered this mode of treatment, is groundless. It is distinctly laid down by Nicander, Celsus, Dioscarides, Galen, and others who lived in their times; and among the moderns who have mentioned it, Gräter, in 1767, notices it in his thesis, “de venenis in genere,” printed at Frankfort. On the ancient history of toxicology the reader will find an excellent summary by Mr. Adams in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xxxiii. 315, and a full exposition in Professor Marx’s elaborate work, “die Lehre von den Giften.”
61. Archives Générales de Médecine, Nov. 1826.
62. Journal des Progrès des Sciences Médicales, 1827, iii. 121.
63. See the Chapter on Arsenic for some remarks on this subject.—Also Beckman’s History of Inventions.
64. See subsequently the cases of the Crown Prince of Sweden, in the first section of the present chapter, and that of General Hoche, Part II. Chap. ii. Sect. 2.
65. I allude to the case of Castaing. See Opium.
66. Feuerbach. Actenmässige Darstellung Merkwürdiger Verbrechen, i. 1. For some observations on the three fatal cases, see the Chapter on Arsenic, under the head of the effects of that poison as an antiseptic.
67. See an opinion of the Berlin College in Pyl’s Repertorium für die gerichtliche Arzneikunde, i. 244.
68.
69. Hume on Crimes, i. 178.
70. Howell’s State Trials, xviii. 1135.
71. Hünefeld in Horn’s Archiv, 1827, i. 203.
72. Weiss in Revue Médicale, Janv. 1826.
73. See subsequently the Chapter on Arsenic, Section ii.
74. Archives Générales de Médecine, i. 17; also Abercrombie on Diseases of the Stomach, &c. 273.
75. See Oxalic Acid and Nux Vomica.
76. Rossi. Ueber die Art und Ursache des Todes des hochseligen Kronprinzen von Schweden. Berlin, 1812.
77. Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 309.
78. Alberti, Systema Jurispr. Medic, i. c. 13. § 4.
79. See Arsenic—Morbid appearances.
80. Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, xiv. 104.
81. Journal de Médecine, xxix. 107.
82. Aufsätze und Beobachtungen aus der gerichtlichen Arzneiwissenschaft, v. 103.
83. Wildberg. Praktisches Handbuch für Physiker, iii. 227.
84. Aufsätze und Beobachtungen, &c. ii. 122.
85. Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xviii. 171.
86. London Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 158.
87. Archiv für Medizinische Erfahrung, 1834, p. 754.
88. Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 303.
89. New York Medical and Philosophical Journal, iii. No. 1.
90. De Veneficio caute dijudicando in Schlegel’s Collectio opusculorum, &c. iv. 22.
91. Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, ii. 291, Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xxvii. 457, and xxix. 26.
92. Archives Générales de Médecine, ii. 58.
93. Materialien für die Staatsarzneikunde, 130.
94. Ueber die gerichtlich-medizinische Beurtheilung der Vergiftungen. Kopp’s Jahrbuch, vii. 159.
95. Rust’s Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, iii. 24.
96. Aufsätze und Beobachtungen, viii. 92.
97. Morning Chronicle, Jan. 8, 1823.
98. Journal Universel des Sciences Médicales, xix. 340.
99. Horn’s Archiv für Medizinische Erfahrung, 1823, i. 451.
100. Bachmann. Einige auserlesene gerichtlich-medizinische Abhandlungen, von Schmitt, Bachmann, &c. p. 21.
101. Revue Médicale, 1828, ii. 469.
102. Orfila, in Journ. de Chim. Med. 1842, p. 77.
103. Probably black extravasation.
104. Marx, die Lehre von den Giften, i. ii. 429, from Hitzig’s Zeitschrift für die Criminal-Rechts-Pflege, I. i. 1.
105. Charret, in Revue Médicale, 1827, i. 514.
106. As a specimen of the vague, desultory, and erroneous nature of the investigations which have been made by authors on this subject, I may quote some remarks published by Virey in the Journal Universel (vi. 26), and drawn, he says, from a comparison of statements in various works. He states that arsenic, which is so fatal to animals in general, merely purges dogs and wolves more or less; that nux vomica is less fatal to man than to dogs; that pepper is fatal to hogs, parsley to parrots, the agrostis arundinacea to goats, elder-berries to poultry, chenopodium vulvaria to swine; that on the contrary the goat eats with impunity hemlock, daphne gnidium, and some species of euphorbia; that the camel eats all species of euphorbia, the hedgehog cantharides, the horse monkshood, ranunculus flammula, and buckthorn; asses and mules white hellebore, swine yew-berries; all which are poisonous to animals in general. He does not state special authorities for these facts; but they are taken from authors not of the most modern times, and must be received, in my opinion, with great reserve, notwithstanding the respect which he claims for the older writers. Some of the statements are plainly false.
In a more recent paper Virey lays it down as a general principle, that poisons from the inorganic kingdom act more or less on the whole animated creation, but that vegetable and animal poisons are such only in respect to particular animals; that carnivorous animals are more sensible to the action of vegetable poisons, but less so to that of animal poisons, than herbivorous or graminivorous animals; and that the activity of poisons on different animals bears a ratio in the first place to their relative sensibility, and secondly, to the digestive power of their stomach. I question whether these views will be generally admitted by toxicologists, without much more extensive and more careful inquiries than any hitherto made. [Journ. de Chim. Méd. vii. 214.]
Another singular illustration of the facility with which facts are admitted in proof of the varying effects of poisons on different animals, is a statement by a German naturalist, Dr. Lenz, to the effect that the hedgehog altogether resists the most powerful poisons. He states that he has seen one receive ten or twelve wounds from a viper on the ears, muzzle, and tongue, without sustaining any harm; and that ultimately it kills and devours the snake. He quotes Palias for the fact that it has taken 100 cantharides flies without injury, and says a medical friend who wished to dissect a hedgehog, gave it successively hydrocyanic acid, arsenic, opium, and corrosive sublimate, without being able to kill it [L’Institut. ii. 84]. His countryman Reich, however, contradicts these statements, observing that he has poisoned the hedgehog with hydrocyanic acid, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate, but that doses considerably larger are required for a dog or cat. Ninety grains of medicinal hydrocyanic acid, thirty of arsenic, and twenty of corrosive sublimate, occasioned death. [Annalen der Pharmacie, i. 358.] One of my colleagues having lately quoted Lenz’s assertion in his lectures, some of his pupils brought me two hedgehogs to be subjected to experiment. A drop of the pure acid put upon the tongue killed each within a minute.
The following experiments by Professor Gohier of the veterinary school of Lyons are worth mentioning; but in order to be satisfactory would require to be performed in a more consecutive train. Muriate of soda in the dose of two or three pounds causes in the horse great disorder and even death. Calomel has no effect. The juice of rhus toxicodendron has no effect on the solipedes either internally or applied to the skin. Ten drachms of opium cause in the horse tympanitis and stupor, not somnolency. Thirty-six grains of opium had no effect on a dog. Cantharides does not injure the horse in the dose of a drachm, or the dog in that of nine grains. When the sheep swallows yew-leaves it is soon seized with locked-jaw and convulsive movements of the lips and flanks: in the horse they cause dilated pupil, convulsive movements of the eyes, and restlessness: the goat and dog eat them with impunity [Corvisart’s Journal de Médecine, xix. 156]: man is severely affected by them. Hyoscyamus, stramonium, hemlock, and other narcotic vegetables, though powerfully narcotic to man, will not affect the domestic animals unless given in doses 100 times as great as those given to man. [Ibid. 154.]
The most important researches I have yet seen in this line of inquiry are those of Professor Viborg of Copenhagen, read in the Royal Danish Society of Sciences in 1792. He instituted a connected series of experiments, expressly to determine how far the effects of poisons on man correspond with those on the lower animals. The results were, that mineral poisons appeared to act nearly in the same manner on all orders of animals, antimonial and barytic salts alone excepted, the former of which acted powerfully on man, the carnivorous animals, and swine, but scarcely at all on ruminating and herbivorous animals, while the latter in doses of a drachm had no effect on horses: That animal poisons resemble mineral poisons in their leading effects on most animals: That the vegetable acrids also act pretty uniformly on most animals: and that of the vegetable narcotics there are few which possess poisonous properties in regard to certain animals only. Yew-leaves kill all ruminating animals, and, notwithstanding Virey’s statement, swine, mules, and horses, also chickens; and they produce violent symptoms in geese, ducks, cats and dogs, although Gohier says dogs eat them with impunity. An ape ate a large quantity of the Æthusa cynapium without injury. Dogs took from an ounce and a half to three ounces of belladonna without dangerous symptoms. [Marx, die Lehre von den Giften,—from Viborg’s Sammlung von Abhandlungen für Thierärzte, i. 277.]
Professor Mayer of Bonn, in an inquiry into the effects of the Coriaria myrtifolia, found that rabbits are not affected at all by a drachm of the extract of the juice given internally, or applied to a wound; while half a drachm swallowed by a cat kills it in a few hours, and three grains will have the same effect when introduced into a wound. He likewise found that it is a deadly poison to the dog, the hawk, and the frog. [Journal der Praktischen Heilkunde, lxviii. 4, 43.]
Professor Giacomini of Padua says, that “in many experiments performed by him on dogs and rabbits, he has constantly observed, that the former, as being carnivorous by nature, sustain stimulating substances tolerably well; while rabbits, being herbivorous, stand stimulants ill, but sedatives well.” “Hence many herbivorous animals eat with impunity large quantities of vegetable poisons of the sedative kind which prove fatal to carnivorous animals.” [Annali Univ. di Med. 1841, i. 372.] This may be true as a general rule. But it is not universally applicable; for alcoholic fluids kill dogs with great swiftness in no great dose.
An extraordinary statement was lately brought before the French Institute, to the effect that 120 sheep, affected with an epidemic pleurisy, got each about 500 grains of arsenic without sustaining the slightest harm; and that it was also ascertained to have no poisonous action upon sheep even in a state of health. A commission of the Institute, however, which was appointed to test this assertion, found that healthy sheep were killed by a dose of 155 grains, if they had fasted for some time before [Annales d’Hyg. Publ. &c. 1843, xxix. 468.] It is reasonable to suppose, that ruminating animals, whose alimentary canal is scarcely ever empty should suffer less than carnivorous animals from such poisons as arsenic.
Lassaigne, in some experiments with arsenic, incidentally remarked, that 246 grains of solid arsenic given daily for four days had no effect whatever on a horse; but that this result seemed to depend on the difficulty which the stomach must experience in appropriating it among the bulky materials of its food; for 154 grains in solution killed the same animal in six hours [Journ. de Chim. Méd. 1841, 82].—Gianelli of Lucca found that a horse was killed in eight hours by 185 grains of powder of arsenic given in the form of bolus [Annales d’Hyg. Publ. &c. 1842, xxviii. 88].
I might easily extend these extracts. But the result would be merely a mass of contradiction, from which no sound conclusion could be drawn, otherwise the subject would have been discussed in the text.
107. Pyl’s Aufsätze und Beobachtungen, i. 29.
108. Celebrated Trials, vi. 55.
109. Toxicologie Générale, ii. 676.
110. Journal des Progrès des Sciences Médicales, 1827, iv. 124. See subsequently the articles Oxalic Acid and Narcotine.
111. Journal de Chimie Méd. vii. 131.
112. Journal de Physiologie, ii. 1, and iii. 81.
113. Ibidem, iii. 84.
114. De Sedibus et Causis Morborum, T. ii. Ep. lix. 18.
115. Knape und Hecker’s Kritische Jahrbücher der Staatsarzneikunde, ii. 100.
116. L’Examinateur Médical, 1 Juin, 1842, from Bulletino delle Scien. Med. Jan. 1842.
117. Annales d’Hyg. Publ. et de Méd. Lég. 1842, xxviii. 84.
118. Ibid. 1843, xxix. 471.
119. Trial.—This is a good illustration. Nevertheless, it will be seen under the head of morbid appearances caused by the irritant class of poisons, that Dr. Bostock’s experiments, though conclusive as to the statement in the text, did not affect the real questions in the case.
120. See trial of Freeman—article Hydrocyanic Acid.
121. I have unfortunately mislaid the reference to this interesting fact, which was taken, I think, from a French periodical. In this country arsenic is never employed for the purpose mentioned in the text.
122. Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, xxxiii. 67.
123. Archives Générales de Médecine, xxi. 364.
124. Journal de Chimie Médicale, vi. 149.
125. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xxix. 23.
126. Ibid., xxvii. 441. On considering, however, this and other instances of the kind which have since come under my notice, I suspect the case is rendered intelligible by the effect of sleep in suspending or delaying for a time the action of arsenic and other simply irritating poisons. See above—evidence from symptoms beginning soon after a meal, p. 46.—also article Arsenic.
127. Howell’s State Trials, xviii.
128. Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, xxxv. 298.
129. Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, xxii. 438.
130. For a very striking example of the latter description see Hufeland’s Journal der Praktischen Heilkunde, xii. i. 110. Fourteen people were seized about the same time in a charity workhouse.
131. Having mislaid the copy I possessed of this trial, I am unable to give here the reference.
132. De Sedibus et Causis Morborum, T. ii. Ep. lix. 7.
133. Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, xxxiii. 67.
134. Howell’s State Trials, xviii.