Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/688

 the kind, and that it will take effect even when there is no natural tendency to miscarriage, or any particular weakness of constitution.

Notwithstanding these statements, it may be suspected that M. Hélie has overrated both its poisonous properties and its virtues as a drug capable of inducing miscarriage.

Of Poisoning with Ipecacuan.

Ipecacuan is well known as an emetic. It is procured from a plant of the natural family Rubiaceæ, the Cephaëlis ipecacuanha. It contains a peculiar principle, not yet crystallized, which is white, permanent in the air, sparingly soluble in water, easily soluble in alcohol and ether, fusible about 122° F., capable of forming crystallizable salts with acids, and possessing an alkaline reaction on litmus. It was discovered by M. Pelletier.

Ipecacuan itself is not known to be a poison; because in consequence of its emetic properties it is quickly discharged from the stomach. But in doses of considerable magnitude it would probably be dangerous. In some constitutions the odoriferous effluvia from the powder induce difficult breathing, anxiety, and imperfect convulsions. I have met with several instances of this singular idiosyncrasy, and one in particular where the subject of it, a surgeon's apprentice, suffered so often and so severely as to be induced to abandon the medical profession. A German physician, Dr. Prieger, has published a remarkable case of a druggist's servant, who, in consequence of incautiously inhaling the dust of ipecacuan powder, was attacked with a sense of tightness in the chest, vomiting, and soon after an alarming sense of suffocation from tightness of the throat. When these symptoms had continued several hours the uneasiness in the throat was removed after the use of a decoction of uva-ursi and rhatany-root; but the dyspnœa remained several days.

Its active principle, emeta, is a powerful poison. Two grains of the pure alkaloid will kill a dog; and the symptoms are frequent vomiting, followed by sopor and coma, and death in fifteen or twenty-four hours. In the dead body the lungs and stomach are found inflamed. The same effects result from injecting it into a vein, or applying it to a wound. It appears, then, to be a narcotico-acrid. But its irritant properties are so prominent that it might be properly arranged with the vegetable acrids.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

OF POISONING WITH STRYCHNIA, NUX VOMICA, AND FALSE ANGUSTURA.

The next group of the narcotico-acrids includes a few vegetable