Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/489

 probable, that the property resides in a particular part of the fish or in a particular principle. In 1827, I made some experiments on those which caused the fatal accident at Leith, but without success. My attention was turned particularly to the liver; but neither there nor in the other parts of the fish could I detect any principle which did not equally exist in the wholesome muscle. This result, however, should not deter others, any more than it would myself, from a fresh investigation; for the want of a sufficient supply prevented me from making a thorough analysis; and the reader will presently find an instance related, where another singular poison, sometimes contained in sausages and in cheese, was, after repeated failures, at length traced successfully to the real cause by the hand of the analytic chemist.

M. Lamouroux, in a letter to Professor Orfila, conjectures that the poison may be a particular species of Medusa, and enters into some ingenious explanations of his opinion. But it is not supported by any material fact, and seems to be surrounded by insuperable difficulties. It is not a new conjecture; for Möhring mentions in his paper formerly quoted, that several writers before him had conceived such a cause might afford an explanation of the phenomena.

Little or no light is thrown on this singular subject by the nature of the localities in which the poisonous muscle has been found. Even on this point we possess little information. Both in Dr. Burrows's and Dr. Combe's cases the fish was attached to wood. At Leith they were taken from some Memel fir logs, which formed the bar of one of the wet-docks, and had lain there at least fifteen years. From the stone-walls of the dock in the immediate vicinity of this bar muscles were taken which proved quite wholesome. It is impossible, however, to attach any importance to these facts; for Dr. Coldstream informs me, that he examined muscles which were attached to the fir piles of the Newhaven Chain-pier, about a mile from Leith, and found them wholesome. In the latter animals the liver was not large, as in the poisonous muscles of Leith. Lamouroux states, but I know not on what authority, that muscles never become poisonous unless they are exposed alternately to the air and the sea in their place of attachment, and unless the sea flows in gently over them without any surf,—these conditions being considered by him requisite for the introduction of the poisonous Medusæ into the shell.

Of Poisonous Oysters.

Oysters sometimes acquire deleterious properties analogous to those acquired by muscles. But fewer facts have been collected regarding them. M. Pasquier has mentioned some cases which occurred not long ago at Havre, in consequence apparently of an artificial oyster-bed having been established near the exit of the drain of a public necessary. But I have not been able to consult his work. Another