Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/471

 closely that of the black hellebore. The herb, however, in Scotland, has certainly none of the peculiar acrid pungency of the ranunculus, anemone, or clematis, but is on the contrary bland. Some other genera of equal power have been usually arranged with the narcotico-acrid poisons on account of their action on the nervous system; and probably some of the present group of acrids might with equal propriety be removed to the same class.

Of plants possessing acrid properties and interspersed throughout other natural families, the only species I shall particularly notice are the mezereon, cuckow-pint, gamboge, daffodil, jalap-plant, and savine.

Of Poisoning with Mezereon.

The mezereon and several other species of the genus Daphne to which it belongs are powerfully acrid. They belong to the natural order Thymeleæ. The active properties of the bark of mezereon have been traced to a very acrid resin; and those of the allied species, Daphne alpina, to a volatile, acrid acid. The experiments of Orfila have been confined to a foreign species, the D. Gnidium or garou of the French. Three drachms of the powder of its bark retained in the stomach of a dog killed it in twelve hours; and two drachms applied to a wound killed another in two days. The action of the other species has not been so scientifically investigated; but fatal accidents have arisen from them when taken by the human species. Children have been tempted to eat the berries of the D. mezereon by their singular beauty; and some have died in consequence. Three such cases, not fatal, have been related by Dr. Grieve of Dumfries. Two of the children had violent vomiting and purging: in the third narcotic symptoms came on in five hours, namely, great drowsiness, dilatation of the pupils, extreme slowness of the pulse, retarded respiration, and freedom from pain. Vicat relates the case of a man who took the wood of it for dropsy, and was attacked with profuse diarrhœa and obstinate vomiting, the last of which symptoms recurred occasionally for six weeks. A fatal case, in a child about eight years of age, occurred a few years ago in this city. Linnæus in his Flora Suecica says that six berries will kill a wolf, and that he once saw a girl die of excessive vomiting and hæmoptysis, in consequence of taking twelve of them to check an ague. The D. laureola or spurge-laurel, a common indigenous species, abounding in low woods, is said by Withering to be very acrid, especially its root. Of Poisoning with Cuckow-pint.

The Arum maculatum, or cuckow-pint, one of our earliest spring