Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/473

 toxicologist will feel any surprise at such results, when he learns that one sort contains, besides aloes and colocynth, half a grain of gamboge, and another three times as much, in each pill; and that ten, fifteen, or even twenty pills are sometimes taken for a dose once or oftener in the course of the day. The symptoms in the cases alluded to were sickness, vomiting and watery purging, pain, tension, fulness, tenderness, and heat in the abdomen, with cold extremities and sinking pulse; and in the dead body the appearances were great redness of the stomach with softening of its villous coat, in the intestines softening and slate-gray coloration of the same coat, and in one instance intestinal ulceration.

Gamboge is one of the poisons whose energy seems to be irregularly modified by the co-existence of certain constitutional states in disease. Physicians in Britain cannot but be startled to hear of the practice, prevailing among the followers of Rasori in Italy, of administering this purgative in doses of a drachm and upwards in inflammatory diseases. But it is nevertheless undeniable, that it has been given to that extent in such circumstances, with no further consequence than brisk purging. Professor Linoli mentions two cases of inflammatory dropsy, in which he gave gamboge-powder in gradually increasing doses, till he reached in one instance an entire drachm, and in the other 86 grains. In the course of a month one of his patients got 1044 grains, and the other took 850 grains in twelve days. Both recovered from their dropsy, and the purging was never great.

Of Poisoning with Daffodil.

The common daffodil, the Narcissus pseudo-narcissus of botanists, though commonly arranged with the vegetable acrids, seems not entitled to a place among them. At least the experiments of Orfila rather tend to show that it acts through absorption on the nervous system. Four drachms of the aqueous extract of this plant secured in the stomach in the usual way killed a dog in less than twenty-four hours; and one drachm applied to a wound killed another in six hours. In both cases vomiting or efforts to vomit seemed the only symptom of note; and in both the stomach was found here and there cherry-red. The wound was not much inflamed. Of Poisoning with Jalap.

Jalap, the powder of the root of the Ipomæa purga, and a common purgative, is an active poison in large doses; and this every one should know, as severe and even dangerous effects have followed its incautious use in the hands of the practical joker. Its active properties reside in a particular resinous principle. It contains a tenth of its weight of mixed resin, which, like the resin of euphorbium, has been separated by Drs. Buchner and Herberger into two, one pos-*