Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/39

 other constitutions to be extremely inactive; for it has occasionally been found impossible to bring on the peculiar constitutional action of mercury by continuing the use of its preparations for months together. In general children are not easily affected by calomel as a sialagogue, but easily by its laxative action. As to alcohol, it is a familiar fact, that independently of the effects of habit, there are some constitutions which cannot be brought under the influence of intoxicating liquors without an extraordinary quantity of them and a long-continued debauch, while others are overpowered in a short space of time, and by very moderate excess; and there is no reason to doubt that very great constitutional differences also prevail in regard to the operation of a single large dose. A rarer idiosyncrasy is unusual insensibility to the action of opium. I am acquainted with a gentleman unaccustomed to the use of opium who has taken without injury nearly an ounce of good laudanum,—a dose which would certainly prove fatal to most people.

But not only does idiosyncrasy modify the action of poisons: Through its means, too, some substances are actually poisonous to certain individuals, which to mankind in general are unhurtful, nay, even nutritive.

With some people all kinds of red fish, trout, salmon, and even the richer white fish, herring, mackerel, turbot, or holibut, disagree as it is called—that is, act after the manner of poisons: They produce fainting, sickness, pain of the stomach; and if they were not speedily evacuated by vomiting, dangerous consequences might ensue. The same is often the case with mushrooms. The esculent mushrooms act on some people nearly in the same way as the poisonous varieties. Bitter almonds and other vegetable substances that contain hydrocyanic acid, sometimes produce stupor or nettle-rash in the small quantities used for seasoning food. In like manner many flowers, which to most persons are agreeable and not injurious, cannot be kept in the same room with some people on account of the severe nervous affections that are developed.

This idiosyncrasy may even be acquired. One of my relations, who was for many years violently affected by very small quantities of the richer kinds of fish, used at a previous period to eat them, and can now again do so, with impunity. Many people have acquired a similar idiosyncrasy with respect to eggs; instances of the same kind will be afterwards mentioned in respect to shell-fish, particularly muscles; indeed there are probably few articles of food in regard to which such idiosyncrasies may not in a few rare instances be met with, if we except the grains and common kinds of butcher-meat. I may add, that from facts which have come under my notice, I have sometimes suspected that a similar idiosyncrasy may be acquired in a slight degree, and for a short time only, in regard even to some kinds of butcher-meat, especially the flesh of young animals and pork. On this subject some illustrations will be found at the close of the chapter on diseased and decayed animal matter.

It does not appear well ascertained, that the effect of idiosyncrasy