Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/674

 tongue and face, colic, tenderness of the belly, vomiting, and purging. One of these, who ultimately recovered, had frantic delirium for some time after the other symptoms went off. The two others died, one in two hours, the other half an hour later. Dr. Pereira and Dr. Fleming doubt the authenticity of these cases; and it may be, that such unusual symptoms may have arisen either from some other root mistaken by the narrators for monkshood, or from irritant substances given along with or after it. At the same time I may mention, that in the first trials I made with monkshood as a medicine, using a carefully-prepared extract of the root, I was deterred from proceeding by two patients being attacked with severe vomiting, griping, and diarrhœa.

It may be well to conclude these general statements by the particulars of a few well authenticated cases. Dr. Pereira describes two that were occasioned by the root having been dug up in February by mistake for horse-radish. The parties, a gentleman and his wife, ate, the former about a root and a half, the latter not much more than half a root. Both of them in three-quarters of an hour had burning, and numbness in the lips, mouth, and throat, extending to the stomach and followed by vomiting. The husband had subsequently violent and frequent vomiting, partly owing to an emetic. His extremities became cold, the lips blue, the eyes glaring, and the head covered with cold sweat. There was no spasm or convulsion, but some tremor. He had no delirium, or stupor, or loss of consciousness, but complained of violent headache. The respiration was not affected; and although he felt very weak, he was able to walk with a little assistance only a few minutes before death; which took place, as if from fainting, about four hours after the poison was swallowed.—His wife, in addition to the early symptoms already mentioned, had such weakness and stiffness of the limbs that she was unable to stand; and she could utter only unintelligible sounds; but she had no spasms or convulsions. She experienced a strange sensation of numbness in the hands, arms, and legs, diminution of sensibility over the whole integuments, especially of the face and throat, where the sense of touch was almost extinguished. She had also some dimness of vision, giddiness, and at times an approach to loss of consciousness, but no delirium, sleepiness, or deafness. She recovered, under the use of emetics, laxatives, and stimulants. In neither of these cases was there any diarrhœa.—A patient of Mr. Sherwen, five minutes after taking a tincture of the root, suffered from the same incipient symptoms as above, but without actual vomiting. The face seemed to her to swell, and the throat to contract; she became nearly blind, and excessively feeble, but did not lose her consciousness. The eyes were fixed and protruded, and the pupils contracted, the jaws stiff, the face livid, the whole body cold, the pulse imperceptible, the heart's action feeble and fluttering, and the breathing short and laborious. An emetic was followed first by violent convulsions, and then by vomiting; after