Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/652

 livid suffusion of the countenance. In an instance communicated to me by my colleague Dr. Traill, where eighteen or twenty grains of extract of stramonium were taken by mistake for sarsaparilla, the symptoms were dryness of the throat immediately afterwards, then giddiness, dilated pupils, flushed face, glancing of the eyes, and incoherence, so that he seemed to his friends to be intoxicated: and subsequently there was incessant unconnected talking, like that of demency. Emetics were given without effect, and little amendment was obtained from blood-letting, leeches on the temples, cold to the head, or purgatives. But after a glass of strong lemonade vomiting took place, the symptoms began to recede, in ten hours he recognized those around him, and next day he was pretty well. Kaauw Boerhaave has related with great minuteness the case of a girl who very nearly lost her life in consequence of a man having given her the powder in coffee with the view of seducing her. The symptoms were redness of the features, delirium, nymphomania, loss of speech; then fixing of the eyes, tremors, convulsions, and coma; afterwards tetanic spasm and slow respiration with the coma. She was with much difficulty roused for a time by the operation of emetics, and eventually got well after her lethargy had lasted nearly a day. In another related in Rust's Magazin, and caused by a decoction of the fruit, which was mistaken for thistle-heads, the leading symptoms were spasmodic closing of the eyelids and jaws, spasms also of the back, complete coma, and excessive dilatation and insensibility of the pupil. This case, which seems to have been a very dangerous one, was rapidly cured by free blood-letting. Blood-letting, indeed, seems peculiarly called for in poisoning with thorn-apple, on account of the strong signs of determination of blood to the head.—Gmelin has quoted several fatal cases, one of which endured for six hours only; and Dr. Young says, that a child has been killed by a single apple. The most complete account yet published of the phenomena of poisoning with stramonium when fatal is given by Mr. Duffin of London. A child of his own, two years old, swallowed about 100 seeds without chewing them. Soon after she became fretful and like a person intoxicated; in the course of an hour efforts to vomit ensued, together with flushed face, dilated pupils, incoherent talking, and afterwards wild spectral illusions and furious delirium. In two hours and a half she lost her voice and the power of swallowing, evidently owing to spasms of the throat. Then croupy breathing and complete coma set in, with violent spasmodic agitation of the limbs, occasional tetanic convulsions, warm perspiration, and yet an imperceptible pulse. Subsequently the pulse became extremely rapid, the belly tympanitic, and the bladder paralyzed, but with frequent involuntary stools, probably owing to the administration of cathartics; and death took place in twenty-four hours. At an early period twenty seeds