- gering several months.[1] But the most frequent cases of poisoning
with ammonia have arisen from its being inhaled, and thus exciting bronchial inflammation. An instructive instance of the kind has been related by M. Nysten. A medical man, liable to epilepsy, was found in a fit by his servant, who ignorantly tried to rouse him by holding assiduously to his nostrils a handkerchief dipped in ammonia. In this way about two drachms appear to have been consumed. On recovering his senses, the gentleman complained of burning pain from the mouth downwards to the stomach, great difficulty in swallowing, difficult breathing, hard cough, and copious expectoration, profuse mucous discharge from the nostrils, and excoriation of the tongue. The bronchitis increased steadily, and carried him off in the course of the third day, without convulsions or any mental disorder having supervened.[2] A case precisely similar is related in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal. A lad, while convalescent from an attack of fever, was seized with epilepsy, for which his attendant applied ammonia under his nose "with such unwearied, but destructive benevolence, that suffocation had almost resulted. As it was, dyspnœa with severe pain of the throat and breast, immediately succeeded; and death took place forty-eight hours afterwards."[3] A third instance has been recorded of analogous effects produced by the incautious use of ammonia as an antidote for prussic acid. The patient had all the symptoms of a violent bronchitis, accompanied with redness and scattered ulceration of the mouth and throat; but he recovered in thirteen days.[4] A fourth case, similar to the preceding, has been related by M. Souchard of Batignolles. A druggist, who inhaled while asleep the fumes of ammonia from a broken carboy, awoke in three-quarters of an hour, with the mucous membrane of the mouth and nostrils corroded, and a bloody discharge from the nose. A severe attack of bronchitis followed, during which he could not speak for six days; but being actively treated with antiphlogistic remedies, he recovered.[5]—An extraordinary case has been published by Mr. Paget of death from injecting ammonia into the blood-vessels. A solution weak enough to allow of the nose being held over it was injected into a nævis in a child two years old. An attack of convulsions immediately followed, and in a minute the child expired.[6]
Nysten's case is the only one in the human subject in which the morbid appearances were ascertained. The nostrils were blocked up with an albuminous membrane. The whole mucous coat of the larynx, trachea, bronchi, and even of some of the bronchial ramifications, was mottled with patches of lymph. The gullet and stomach showed red streaks here and there; and there was a black eschar on the tongue, and another on the lower lip.
Of Poisoning with Hydrochlorate of Ammonia.—The effects of
