Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/509

 when, after an attack of sickness, slight bowel-complaint, and general tenderness of the belly, he discharged them all at one evacuation. Many singular instances to the same effect have been related in the various medical journals of Europe. At the head of the list, however, may be placed the following, which is related by the late Professor Osiander of Göttingen, in his work on Suicide.

A young German nobleman tried to kill himself in a fit of insanity by swallowing different indigestible substances, but without success. He never suffered any particular inconvenience except a single attack of vomiting daily, though in the course of seven months after being detected he passed the following articles by stool—150 pieces of sharp, angular glass, some of them two inches long—102 brass pins—150 iron nails—three large hair pins, and seven large chair-nails—a pair of shirt-sleeve buttons—a collar-buckle, half of a shoe-buckle, and three bridle-buckles—half a dozen sixpenny pieces—three hooks, and a lump of lead—three large fragments of a curry-*comb, and fifteen bits of nameless iron articles, many of them two inches in length.

Before such articles occasion serious harm, it is necessary that some cause coincide, by means of which the foreign bodies are detained long in the same part of the intestines; otherwise the irritation they produce is too trivial to excite disease.

The only substance of this kind which it is necessary to particularize is pounded glass. A common notion prevails that pounded glass is an active poison. There is no doubt, indeed, that it does possess some irritant properties even when finely pulverized; for it titillates and smarts the nostrils, and inflames the eyes. There is also little doubt that when swallowed in fragments of moderate size, especially if the stomach is empty, it may wound the viscera. But it is in this way only that it has any action when swallowed, and even then its effects are by no means uniformly serious. It can have no chemical action on the stomach; it cannot act through absorption, as it is quite insoluble: and when finely pulverized, it cannot easily wound the villous coat of the alimentary canal, on account of the abundance and viscidity of the lubricating mucus.

Accordingly, M. Lesauvage ascertained that 2-1/2 drachms of the powder may be given to a cat at once without hurting the animal,—that in the course of eight days seven ounces might be given to a dog without any bad consequence, although the period chosen for administering it was always some time before meals,—and that even when the glass was in fragments a line in length, no symptoms of irritation were induced. Relying indeed on these results he himself swallowed a considerable number of similar fragments; and did not sustain any injury. Caldani likewise, an Italian physician, after some experiments on animals, gave a boy fifteen years old several drachms of pounded glass, without observing any bad effects; and at his request