Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/386

 by hydrosulphuric acid gas. This process may be applied to all organic mixtures containing tin.

The oxide of tin, according to Schubarth, is quite inactive; for he gave an entire drachm to a dog without being able to observe any effect from it whatever. This is what would be expected from its extreme insolubility. Yet Orfila has stated in the early editions of his Toxicology, and repeats in that of 1843, but without noticing the contradictory observations of Schubarth, that one or two drachms of the oxide occasion in dogs all the phenomena of irritant poisoning, and prove invariably fatal.

The metal has been proved by Bayen and Charlard to be inactive. It has been given expressly to dogs without any effect being observed; and it is given in large doses to man for worms, without detriment. No importance therefore can be attached to some alleged cases of poisoning with this metal.

Cases of poisoning with the preparations of tin are rare. Orfila briefly notices a set of cases which occurred to M. Guersent. Several persons in a family took the protochloride, in consequence of the cook having mistaken a packet of it for salt and dressed their dinner with it. They had all colic, some of them diarrhœa; none vomited; and all recovered in a few days. A case is related in the Medical Times of death apparently caused by so small a quantity as half a tea-spoonful of a solution of protochloride. The effects were vomiting, acute pain in the stomach, anxiety, restlessness, thirst, and a frequent, hard, small pulse. These symptoms increased next day; and on the third day death took place, preceded by delirium: As this was a case of suicide, it is probable that some other poison, or a larger dose of the chloride of tin was taken.

Little need be said of the morbid appearances. Besides the signs of violent irritation caused by the poisons of tin in common with other irritants, Orfila always found in dogs a peculiar tanned appearance of the villous coat of the stomach. In the case from the Medical Times the gullet was red, the stomach inflamed externally, and internally thickened, vascular, and pulpy.

Of Poisoning with Silver.

Of the preparations of silver, the only one which requires notice is the nitrate or lunar caustic.

It exists in two forms,—crystallized in broad, transparent, colourless tables,—and fused into cylindrical, crystalline, grayish pencils. Both forms are essentially the same in chemical nature.—The most convenient tests are, 1, Hydrochloric acid, or any hydrochlorate, which even in a state of extreme dilution causes with it a dense