Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/693

 and a half of the alcoholic extract thrust into a wound killed another in seven minutes. The animals uniformly experienced dreadful fits of tetanic spasm, with intervals of relaxation and sensibility, and were carried off during a paroxysm.

The cause of death appears to be prolonged spasm of the thoracic muscles of respiration. The spasm of these muscles is apparent in the unavailing efforts which the animals make to inspire. The external muscles of the chest may be felt during the fits as hard almost as bone; and, according to an experiment of Wepfer, the diaphragm partakes in the spasm of the external muscles.

On account of the singular symptoms of irritation of the spinal cord, uncombined with any injury of the brain, this poison is believed to act on the spinal marrow alone. This is farther shown by the experiments of Mr. Blake with strychnia alluded to above. But from some experiments by Segalas it appears also to exhaust the irritability of the heart: for in animals he found that organ could not be stimulated to contract after death, and life could not be prolonged by artificial breathing. A similar observation was made long ago by Wepfer, who found the heart motionless and distended with arterial blood in its left cavities; and a case of poisoning in the human subject to the same effect will be presently related. The pulse is always very weak, often wholly suppressed during a paroxysm; and in the case alluded to it was found on dissection pale, flaccid and empty, having been apparently affected with spasm. The action exerted through the medium of the spinal cord on the muscles is wholly independent of the brain; for Stannius found that in frogs the removal of the brain does not interfere with the effects.

Of late poisoning with nux vomica has been common. The most characteristic example yet published is a case related by Mr. Ollier, of a young woman, who in a fit of melancholy, took between two and three drachms of the powder in water. When the surgeon first saw her, half an hour afterwards, she was quite well. But going away in search of an emetic, and returning in ten minutes, he found her in a state of great alarm, with the limbs extended and separated, and the pulse faint and quick. She then had a slight and transient convulsion succeeded by much agitation and anxiety. In a few minutes she had another, and not long afterwards a third, each about two minutes in duration. During these fits, "the whole body was stiffened and straightened, the legs pushed out and forced wide apart; no pulse or breathing could be perceived; the face and hands were livid, and the muscles of the former violently convulsed." In the short intervals between the fits she was quite sensible, had a feeble rapid pulse, complained of sickness with great thirst, and perspired freely. "A fourth and most violent fit soon succeeded, in which the whole body was extended to the utmost from head to foot. From