- ever, continues to repeat the error; for even in the last edition of his
Toxicologie he says it has "a rough, not corrosive, slightly styptic taste, perceptible not for a few seconds, but persistent, and attended with salivation."[1] These sensations must be either imaginary or the indications of an organ peculiarly constituted. It is impossible to make satisfactory experiments with safety on its impressions on the back of the palate. But we may rest assured that in general it makes no impression there at all; for it has been often swallowed unknowingly with articles of food. Not a few have in such circumstances noticed merely its grittiness, and thought there was sand in their food. Two instances only am I hitherto acquainted with, where an acrid sensation would seem really to have been experienced in the act of eating or swallowing. In one of these, noticed in Rust's Journal, the individual who was poisoned, could not finish the poisoned dish on account of its unpleasant, very peppery taste.[2] In the other case, which was lately communicated to me by Mr. Hewson of Lincoln, the individual, who was poisoned by arsenic dissolved in his tea-kettle,—happening in the first instance to wash his mouth with the water,—observed at the time to his daughter, that it had a very odd taste; which subsequently was called a burning taste. These facts, however, are evidently not altogether satisfactory. It is not improbable that, in an ex post facto description, the reporters, as others in the same circumstances have clearly done[3], confounded the subsequent inflammation with mere taste in the act of chewing or swallowing. At all events it is absolutely certain that the great majority of people who have been poisoned with arsenic remarked in taking it either no taste at all, or merely a roughness owing to the gritty condition of its powder.
The oxide of arsenic when subjected to heat is sublimed at 380°, or, according to Dr. Mitchell, 425° F.[4] and condenses in the form of a crystalline powder, which, if the operation is performed slowly and on a small quantity proportioned to the size of the tube, evidently consists of little, adamantine octaedres.—When it is mixed with carbonaceous matter and heated, it is reduced, and the metal is sublimed. This constitutes the test of reduction, which, when conducted with due care, may be rendered singly a certain proof of the presence of arsenic.
Water dissolves it. Its solubility is a point of some medico-legal importance; for a doubt may arise whether the quantity of a solution that has been swallowed contained a sufficient dose to cause severe symptoms or death. Different statements have gone forth on this head. Klaproth found, that a thousand parts of temperate water take up only two parts and a half,—and that a thousand parts of boiling water take up 77·75 parts or a thirteenth, and retain on cool-*]
- ↑ Toxicologie Gén. 1843, i. 376.
- ↑ Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, v. 66.
- ↑ Mr. Blandy, for example, who said he "perceived an extraordinary grittiness in his mouth, attended with a very painful pricking and burning pain in his tongue, throat, stomach, and bowels." [Howell's State Trials, xviii. 1135.
- ↑ Americal Journal of Medical Science, x. 122.
