Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/456

 and she was much subject to severe palpitations; but she was in the way of recovery when the account of her case was published. Mr. Parkes mentions that, according to information communicated to him by the proprietor of an estate in Lancashire, where carbonate of baryta abounds, many domestic animals on his estate died in consequence of licking the dust of the carbonate, and that it once proved fatal to two persons, a woman and her child, who took each about a drachm. Dr. Johnstone says he once swallowed ten grains of this compound, without experiencing any bad effect.

III.—Of the Morbid Appearances caused by the Salts of Baryta.

In animals the mucous membrane of the stomach is usually found of a deep-red colour, unless death take place with great rapidity, in which case the alimentary canal is healthy. In all the animals, which in Dr. Campbell's experiments were killed by the application of the muriate to wounds, the brain and its membranes were much injected with blood; and in one of them the appearances were precisely those of congestive apoplexy.

In Wach's case the stomach was dark brownish-red externally, and the small intestines brighter red. Internally the stomach presented uniform deep redness, with clots of blood, and bloody mucus scattered over it; and near the cardiac end there was a perforation, above half an inch in diameter within, and half as wide at the outside, and surrounded with swollen edges and extensive thickening of the villous coat. The small intestines were internally very red and lined with red mucus interspersed with clots of blood. The great intestines were extremely contracted. The lungs were gorged, the heart full of dark liquid blood, and the cerebral vessels distended. Chloride of barium was detected in the stomach and intestines. The perforation in this case was evidently an accidental concurrence.

IV.—Of the Treatment.

The treatment of this variety of poisoning consists chiefly in the speedy administration of some alkaline or earthy sulphate, such as the sulphate of soda or sulphate of magnesia. The poison is thus immediately converted into the insoluble sulphate of baryta, which is quite inert. Two drachms of muriate of baryta were injected by Orfila into the stomach of a dog, and eight minutes afterwards two drachms of sulphate of soda. The gullet was then secured by a ligature. At first efforts were made to vomit, and in an hour sulphate of baryta was discharged with the alvine evacuations. There was neither insensibility nor convulsions; and the next morning the animal evidently suffered only from the ligature on the gullet. This fact not only proves the efficacy of the sulphate, but likewise shows