Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/460

 with those noticed under the head of their mode of action,—more or less redness of the stomach, ulceration of its villous coat, redness of the intestines, and especially of the rectum and colon, which are often inflamed when the small intestines are not visibly affected.

In the following account of the particular poisons of this order, a very cursory view will be taken of their physical and chemical properties. A knowledge of these properties will be best acquired from any author on the materia medica; and an account of them would be misplaced in a work which professes to describe only the leading objects of the medical jurist's attention.

A great number of genera might be arranged under the present head. But the following list comprehends all which require mention. Euphorbia, or spurge, the ricinus, or castor-oil tree, the jatropha, or cassava-plant, croton oil, elaterium, or squirting-cucumber, colocynth, or bitter-apple, bryony, or wild cucumber, ranunculus, or buttercup, anemone, stavesacre, celandine, marsh-marigold, mezereon, spurge-laurel, savine, daffodil, jalap, manchineel, cuckow-pint. The first plants to be noticed belong to the natural order Euphorbiaceæ, namely, the euphorbia, ricinus, jatropha, and croton. Of Poisoning with Euphorbium.

Euphorbium is the inspissated juice of various plants of the genus euphorbia or spurge, but is principally procured from the E. officinarum, a species that abounds in Northern Africa. It contains a variety of principles; but its chief ingredient is a resin, in which its active properties reside. It has been analysed by Braconnot, Pelletier, Brandes, and Drs. Buchner and Herberger. According to Brandes the resin forms above 44 per cent. of the crude drug, and is so very acrid, that the eyelid is inflamed by rubbing it with the finger which has touched the resin, even although it be subsequently washed with an alkali. According to the most recent analysis, that of Drs. Buchner and Herberger, this resin is a compound substance, which consists of two resinous principles, one possessing in some degree the properties of an acid, and the other the properties of a base. The latter, which they have called euphorbin, is considered by them the true active principle of euphorbium. It will be mentioned under the head of Jalap, that they have taken the same view of the nature of other resinous poisons.

Orfila found that a large dog was killed in twenty-six hours and a half by half an ounce of powder of euphorbium introduced into the stomach, and retained there by a ligature on the gullet.

The whole coats of the stomach, but especially the villous membrane, were of a deep-red or almost black colour; the colon, and still more the rectum, were of a lively red internally, and their inner membrane was checkered with little ulcers. Two drachms of the powder thrust into a wound in the thigh, and secured by covering it