gangrene, but without any symptom which indicated a remote or indirect operation.[1] Mr. Blake found that this salt, when injected into the veins of a dog in the dose of fifteen grains dissolved in twenty-four parts of water, causes sudden depression and arrestment of the action of the heart, and death in less than a minute; but that, like other salts of potash, it has no influence on the capillaries of the lungs, though a powerful effect in obstructing the systemic capillary system.[2]—When taken in the ordinary way, it is absorbed in the course of its action, and has been detected both in the blood and the urine by Kramer of Milan.[3]
As to its effects on man, it must first be observed, that considerable doses are necessary to cause serious mischief. In the quantity of one, two, or three scruples, it is given medicinally several times a day without injury; and Dr. Alexander found by experiments on himself, that an ounce and a half, if largely diluted, might thus be safely administered in the course of twenty-four hours.[4] Sometimes, too, even large single doses have been swallowed with impunity. A gentleman of my acquaintance once took nearly an ounce by mistake for Glauber's salt, and retained it above a quarter of an hour: nevertheless, except several attacks of vomiting, no unpleasant symptom was induced. M. Tourtelle has even related an instance where two ounces were retained altogether and caused only moderate griping, with considerable purging and flow of urine.[5] Resting on such facts as these Tourtelle, with some physicians in more recent times,[6] has maintained that nitre is not a worse poison than other saline laxatives; and some practitioners of the present day have consequently ventured to administer it for the cure of diseases, in the quantity of half an ounce in one dose.[7] It is not easy to say, why these large doses are at times borne by the stomach without injury,—whether the cause is idiosyncrasy, or a constitutional insensibility engendered by disease, or some difference in the mode of administering the salt. But at all events, the facts which follow will leave no doubt that in general it is a dangerous and rapid poison in the dose of an ounce.
Dr. Alexander found that, in the quantity of a drachm or a drachm and a half, recently dissolved in four ounces of water, and repeated every ninety minutes, the third or fourth dose caused chilliness and stinging pains in the stomach and over the whole body; and these sensations became so severe with the fourth dose, that he considered it unsafe to attempt a fifth.[8]
Two cases which were actually fatal have been described in the Journal de Médecine for 1787, the one caused by one ounce, the other by an ounce and a half. In the latter the symptoms were those of the most violent cholera, and the patient died in two days and a
- ↑ Toxic. Gén. i. 193.
- ↑ Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal, li. 334, liv. 346.
- ↑ Annales d'Hygiène Publique, xxix. 415.
- ↑ Experimental Essays, p. 113.
- ↑ Journal de Médecine, lxxiii. 22.
- ↑ Tartra sur l'empoisonnement par l'acide nitrique, 136.
- ↑ London Med. Repository, xxiii. 523.
- ↑ Experimental Essays, pp. 114, 115.
