Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/714

 when taken as a principal article of food for a considerable length of time, will prove injurious, and that they then induce a peculiar depraved habit, which leads to external suppuration and gangrene. The only cases which have hitherto appeared in support of this statement, were lately published in Rust's Journal. A family, consisting of the mother and four children, were seized with a kind of tertian fever, and the formation of abscesses, which discharged a thin, ill-conditioned pus, passed rapidly into spreading gangrene, and proved fatal to the mother and one of the children. No other cause could be discovered to account for so extraordinary a conjunction of symptoms in so many individuals, except that for two months they had lived almost entirely on mushrooms; and the probability of this being really the cause, was strengthened by the fact, that the father who slept always with his family, and who alone escaped, lived on ordinary food at a place where he worked not far off. In opposition, however, to the natural inference from this narrative, some have believed, that mushrooms may be safely eaten to a large amount and for a long time, provided they be used raw. A botanist of Persoon's acquaintance, while studying the cryptogamous plants in the vicinity of Nuremberg, says he found that the peasants ate them in large quantities as their daily food; and, in imitation of their custom, he ate for several weeks nothing but bread and raw mushrooms; yet at the end he experienced an increase rather than a diminution of strength, and enjoyed perfect health. He adds that they lose their good qualities by cooking; but he has supplied no facts in support of that statement. It is said that eatable fungi, used for a considerable time as a principal article of food, as in Russia, cause greenness of the skin. There is no reason for supposing, as some have done, that wholesome mushrooms may produce the effects of the poisonous kinds, if eaten in large quantity.

Of the Morbid Appearances.—The morbid appearances left in the bodies of persons poisoned by this deleterious fungi have been but imperfectly collected.

The body is in general very livid, and the blood fluid; so much so sometimes, that it flows from the natural openings in the dead body. In general, the abdomen is distended with fetid air, which, indeed, is usually present during life. The stomach and small intestines of the four French soldiers (p. 705), presented the appearance of inflammation passing in some places to gangrene. In two of them especially, the stomach was gangrenous in many places, and far advanced in putrefaction. The same appearances were found in Picco's cases. In these there was also an excessive enlargement of the liver. The lungs have sometimes been found gorged or even inflamed. The vessels of the brain are also sometimes very turgid. They were par-*