Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/294

 applied a method of treatment by anodynes, which has been successfully used in acute inflammation generally,—the free administration of opium immediately after copious depletion. For the safe employment of this method, however, it is essential that the arsenic be completely removed from the stomach and intestines. And from the results of many cases there must always be great reason to apprehend, that, before the treatment can be with propriety resorted to, the patient's strength will be exhausted.

The harassing fits of vomiting which often continue long after the poison has been discharged from the stomach are best removed by opium in the form of clyster, or rubbed over the inside of the rectum in the form of ointment with the finger.

The use of laxatives is particularly required in all cases in which there is tenesmus instead of diarrhœa, or where, in the latter stages, diarrhœa is succeeded by constipation; and castor oil is the laxative generally preferred. While diarrhœa is present, and the evacuations are profuse or the intestines have been thoroughly emptied, laxatives are unnecessary or even hurtful; but emollient clysters are advisable, and opium in the form of enema or suppository. In short, so far as regards the intestinal affection, the treatment of the acute stage of dysentery is to be enforced.

Professor Orfila lays great stress on the employment of diuretics after the stomach has been cleared out, and founds this practice on his observations which show that arsenic is absorbed into the blood, and gradually discharged by the secretions, especially the urine. Experience seems to confirm theory. Dogs, after receiving a small dose, adequate to occasion death, recovered under the active administration of diuretics. Having ascertained that this animal was constantly killed in a period varying from thirty to forty-eight hours by two grains applied to a wound, provided no remedies were employed, he tried the diuretic method with six which had been thus poisoned; and all of them recovered. The diuretic he recommends is a mixture of ten pounds of water, five of white [French] wine, a bottle of Selzer water, and three ounces of nitre; the dose of which is two wine-glassfuls frequently. This method has been followed with success in the human subject. M. Augouard relates a case where 230 grains produced in half an hour all the usual symptoms, which he immediately proceeded to treat by administering a grain and a half of tartar-emetic, to excite full vomiting. Having accomplished this object, he gave frequent doses of decoction of mallow "strongly salpetred," which in seven hours excited so profuse a diuresis that in the ensuing ten hours no less than eighteen imperial pints was discharged. At the close of this period a material amendment took place, and recovery was complete in fifteen days. It may be observed, however, that it is sometimes impossible to excite diuresis.