Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/684

 Peyerian glands. In the other case putrefaction was so far advanced in forty-eight hours as to make the appearances equivocal.

The treatment consists in evacuation of the stomach and bowels by emetics and oleaginous laxatives in the early stage, and afterwards in the employment of opium, stimulants, the warm-bath, and occasionally bloodletting.

Of Poisoning with Foxglove.

Foxglove, or Digitalis purpura, a plant which is common in this country both as a native and in gardens, possesses powerful and peculiar properties. The leaves are considered its most active part. They contain an alkaloid; but chemists have not fixed its nature with precision. M. Le Royer of Geneva procured a pitchy, deliquescent, uncrystallizable substance; but more lately M. Pauguy obtained a principle in fine acicular crystals, soluble in alcohol and ether, but insoluble in water, alkaline in its reaction, and of a very acrid taste. This principle is called digitalin. It seems to be the same substance, which has also been detected by Radig, as quoted by Dr. Pereira. The leaves, like those of other narcotic vegetables, yield by destructive distillation an empyreumatic oil similar in chemical qualities and physiological effects to the empyreumatic oil of hyoscyamus.

From an extensive series of experiments on animals by Orfila with the powder, extract and tincture of the leaves, foxglove appears to cause in moderate doses vomiting, giddiness, languor, and death in twenty-four hours, without any other symptoms of note; but in larger doses, it likewise produces tremors, convulsions, stupor and coma. It acts energetically both when applied to a wound, and when injected into a vein. Mr. Blake has inferred from his researches, that when injected into the jugular vein, it occasions both obstruction of the pulmonary capillaries, and direct depression of the heart's action. In the dog an infusion of three drachms of leaves arrested in five seconds the action of the heart; which was motionless after death, turgid, inirritable, and full of florid blood in its left cavities. An infusion of an ounce, injected back into the aorta from the axillary artery, caused in ten seconds great obstruction of the systemic capillaries, indicated by sudden increase of arterial pressure in the hæmadynamometer; the heart was unaffected for forty-five seconds, when it became slow in its pulsations, and the arterial pressure diminished; and in four minutes the heart ceased to beat, although for a little longer it continued excitable by stimulation. As no affection of the brain or spine was apparent before the heart became affected, the author infers that the action depends on the poisoned blood being circulated through the substance of the heart, and not on any intermediate influence upon the nervous centre.