pustular eruption; the juice of manchineel[1] spreading inflammation of the subcutaneous cellular tissue; arsenic inflammation of all these textures, and also death of the part and subsequent sloughing. Internally, alcohol reddens the stomach, as it does the skin,—but more permanently; while other substances, such as the diluted mineral acids, arsenic, cantharides, euphorbium, and the like, may cause all the phenomena of inflammation in the stomach and intestines, namely, extravasation of blood, effusion of lymph, ulcers, gangrene. Many of these irritants, such as arsenic, are in common speech called corrosives; but they have not any power of causing chemical decomposition: if they produce a breach in the texture of an organ, it is merely through the medium of inflammation and its effects.
Of nervous impressions, without any visible organic change, few well authenticated and unequivocal instances are known. A good example has been mentioned by Sir B. Brodie in the effect of monkshood on the lips when chewed,[2] an effect which I have also often experienced: it causes a sense of numbness and tingling in the lips and tongue, lasting for some hours, and quite unconnected with any affection of the general nervous system. Another instance, first mentioned to me by M. Robiquet, and which I have verified, occurs in the effects of the strong hydrocyanic acid: when this acid is confined in a glass tube with a finger on its open end, the point of the finger becomes benumbed, exactly as from the local action of great cold. These are undoubted instances of a purely nervous local impression on the external surface of the body. The most unequivocal instance I know of a similar impression on internal parts is a fact related by Dr. W. Philip with regard to opium.[3] When this poison was applied to the inner coat of the intestines of a rabbit during life, the muscular contractions of the gut were immediately paralyzed, without the general system being for some time affected. The same effect has been observed by Messrs. Morgan and Addison to follow the application of ticunas to the intestine:[4] an instant and complete suspension of the peristaltic movement took place as soon as it touched the gut. A parallel fact has also been described by Dr. Monro, secundus:[5] when an infusion of opium was injected between the skin and muscles of the leg of a frog, that leg soon became palsied, while the animal was able to leap briskly on the other three. Analogous results have farther been obtained with the prussic acid by M. Coullon.[6] He remarked, that when one hind-leg of a frog was plunged in the acid, it became palsied in thirty-five minutes, while the other hind-leg continued perfectly sensible and irritable. Acetate of lead probably possesses the same property.
These facts are important, because some physiologists have doubted whether any local impressions of a purely nervous nature, uncon-*
- ↑ Orfila and Ollivier, Archives Générales de Médecine, x. 360.
- ↑ Philosophical Transactions, 1811, 186.
- ↑ Experiments on Opium, 1795, reprinted in his Treatise on Fevers, iv. 697.
- ↑ Essay on the Operation of poisonous agents on the living body, 1829, p. 63.
- ↑ Edin. Phys. and Lit. Essays, iii. 311.
- ↑ Researches sur l'Acide Hydrocyanique, 1819, p. 179.
