Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/197

 *duced appeared to depend on derangement of the cerebral functions. A woman, after swallowing an ounce of nitre instead of Glauber's salt, lost the use of speech and the power of voluntary motion, then became insensible, and was attacked with tetanic spasms. This state lasted till next day, when some amelioration was brought about 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.

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. 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. In Dr. Geoghegan's case, the stomach contained bloody mucus, and its villous coat was brownish-red, and here and there detached. He could not detect any nitre in it.

CHAPTER IX.

OF POISONING WITH THE ALKALINE AND EARTHY CHLORIDES.

There can be little doubt that the chlorides of soda, potass, and lime are active poisons; but the first two have alone been hitherto carefully investigated by physiological experiments.

The two alkaline chlorides are usually seen in the form of colourless solutions. That of potass is little known in this country; but that of soda is familiar to all in the shape of Fincham's chloride of soda or bleaching liquid. The chloride of lime, which is best known of them all, is usually in the form of a dry powder, deliquescent, and acrid, commonly termed bleaching powder. All these substances are easily known by their peculiar odour of chlorine, and the copious disengagement of that gas on the addition of sulphuric acid.

The action of chloride of soda on the animal body has been examined by Segalas, who infers that it is an irritant poison, which, however, at times occasions symptoms of an affection of the nervous