Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/470

 on the third day with an eruption of pemphigous vesicles as large as almonds, which dried up in forty-eight hours. They all recovered.

Notwithstanding these apparently pointed facts, however, I have no doubt that the marsh marigold is in some circumstances bland, and is commonly so in this country, or at least but feebly poisonous. Haller, in speaking of its acrid taste, adds that when young it is eaten with safety by goats. For my own part I have never been able to remark any distinct acridity in tasting it either before inflorescence, or in the young flower-buds, or in any part of the plant while in full flower. It produces a peculiar, disagreeable impression on the back of the tongue, when collected in dry situations; but never occasions that pungent acridity which so remarkably characterizes many species of ranunculus, anemone, and clematis.

The stavesacre, or Delphinium staphysagria, another plant of the same natural family, is interesting in a scientific point of view, because its properties have been distinctly traced to a peculiar alkaloid. The seeds, which alone have been hitherto examined, were analyzed by MM. Lassaigne and Feneulle, who, besides a number of inert principles, discovered in them an alkaloid, possessing in an eminent degree the poisonous qualities of the seeds. This alkaloid is solid, white, pulverulent but crystalline, fusible like wax, very bitter and acrid, almost insoluble in water, very soluble in ether and alcohol, and capable of forming salts with most of the acids. It has been named delphinia. It was also discovered about the same time by Brandes.

Orfila found that six grains of it diffused through water, introduced into the stomach of a dog and retained there with a ligature on the gullet, brought on efforts to vomit, restlessness, giddiness, immobility, slight convulsions, and death in two or three hours. The same quantity, if previously dissolved in vinegar, will cause death in forty minutes. In the former case, but not in the latter, the inner coat of the stomach is found to be generally red.

An ounce of the bruised seeds themselves killed a dog in fifty-four hours when introduced into the stomach, and two drachms applied to a wound in the thigh killed another in two days. In the former animal a part of the stomach was crimson-red; in the latter there was extensive subcutaneous inflammation reaching as high as the fourth rib.

Besides these four genera of the ranunculaceæ many other genera of the same natural order are equally energetic. The Clematis vitalba or traveller's-joy is said to be acrid, but does not taste so: the C. flammula, however, is pungently acrid to the taste; it reddens and blisters the skin; and when swallowed excites inflammation in the stomach. The trollius or globe flower is also considered acrid; and its root in appearance, smell, and taste, has been said to resemble