Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/433

 *phuric acid, carbonate of potash, and iodide of potassium. On repeating these experiments, I succeeded in detecting lead in very minute quantity in the lumbar and dorsal muscles of rabbits, but not any where else. Professor Orfila has since frequently found lead, by means of his method of analysis described at page 424, in the kidneys, liver, and urine of animals which had taken large doses of acetate of lead, and once in the urine of a girl who had swallowed above an ounce of the acetate twenty-five hours before the urine was passed. About the same time M. Ausset, under the directions of Lassaigne, detected lead largely in the blood and urine of a horse during life, and in the liver and kidneys after death. Mr. Alfred Taylor found traces of it in the milk of a cow accidentally poisoned by carbonate of lead. M. Tanquerel Desplanches says it has been detected by M. Devergie and himself in the palsied parts of persons who had died of colica pictonum; and Dr. Budd observes, that Mr. Miller found lead in abundance in the paralysed extensors of the hand in a man who died in a London Hospital of the epileptic form of the effects of this poison.

These facts seem to outweigh the negative results obtained by others. Nor are they invalidated by the alleged existence of lead in the healthy animal textures. For in the first place,—although M. Devergie says he has always found traces of lead in the substance of the stomach and intestines of men and women, who had not used preparations of lead or been in any way exposed to it, and Professor Orfila confirmed these observations by also finding traces of lead in the alimentary canal under similar circumstances, —the conclusion flowing from their researches is after all doubtful; for in a later inquiry MM. Danger and Flandin could not find any lead, unless it had been purposely introduced into the body. And secondly,—Devergie adds to his remarks, that the quantity of lead he found in the textures and secretions of those who had died of lead-colic was far greater than in those who had not been exposed to lead preparations before death; and Orfila ascertained that the process by which he detects adventitious lead is incapable of indicating that which may be present naturally in the body.

It is probable that all the preparations of lead are poisonous except the metal, and perhaps also the sulphuret. The experimentalists at the Veterinary School of Lyons found that nearly four ounces of the metal might be given to a dog without even vomiting being excited; and Orfila remarked that an ounce of carefully prepared sul-*