Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/462

 facts, and Lamotte notices the case of a patient who died in consequence of a clyster having been prepared with this species instead of the mercurialis. The seeds and root of the E. lathyris or caper-spurge are used by the inhabitants of the northern Alps in the dose of fifteen grains as an emetic; and very lately the oil of the seeds has been employed in Italy as an active purgative, which in the dose of two or eight grains is said to possess all the efficacy of croton oil. MM. Chevallier and Aubergier have also found the seeds of the E. hybeua and their expressed oil to be very energetic. The seeds yield 44 per cent. of oil, which in the dose of ten drops produces copious watery evacuations without pain, and resembles closely croton-oil in its effects. The E. esula appears to be a very active species. Scopoli says that a woman who took thirty grains of the root died in half an hour, and that he once knew it cause fatal gangrene when imprudently applied to the skin of the belly. Withering observes that all the indigenous species blister and ulcerate the skin, and that many of them are used by country people for these purposes. I have no where seen any notice taken by authors of narcotic symptoms as the effect of poisoning with euphorbium; and indeed this substance has always been considered a pure irritant. I am informed, however, by the Messrs. Herring, wholesale druggists in London, that their workmen are subject to headache, giddiness and stupor, if they do not carefully avoid the dust thrown up while it is ground in the mill; and that the men themselves are familiarly acquainted with this risk. An analogous fact has likewise been communicated to me by Dr. Hood of this city, relative to the effects of the seeds of the E. lathyris. A child two years of age ate some of the seeds, and soon after vomited severely, which is the usual effect. Drowsiness, however, succeeded; and after a few returns of vomiting, which were promoted by an emetic, deep sleep gradually came on, broken by convulsions, stertorous breathing and sighs. Sensibility was somewhat restored by blood-letting and the warm bath; after which the tendency to sleep was interrupted by frequent agitation and exercise in the open air. The vomiting then recurred for a time; but the child eventually got well. Of Poisoning with the Seeds of the Castor-Oil Tree.

Castor-oil at present so extensively used as a mild and effectual laxative, is nevertheless derived from a plant hardly inferior in activity as a poison to that just considered. It is the expressed oil of the seeds of the Ricinus communis or Palma Christi. Much discussion has taken place as to the source of the acrid properties of this seed, some supposing that they reside in the embryo, others in the perisperm, others in the cotyledon, others in a principle formed from the oil