knee-joints. The issue of the case is not mentioned.[1]—Dr. Falconer observes in his essay on Palsy, that he had repeatedly witnessed local palsy after poisoning with arsenic, and alludes to one instance in which the hands only were paralysed, and to two others in which the palsy spread gradually from the fingers upwards till the whole arms were affected.[2]—On the whole, then, local palsy is the most frequent of the secondary effects of arsenic.
It is sometimes very obstinate, as the cases related by Dehaen and Murray will show. But it even appears to be sometimes incurable. For in the German Ephemerides there is related the case of a cook, who after suffering from the usual inflammatory symptoms, was attacked with perfect palsy of the limbs, and had not any use of them during the rest of her life, which was not a short one.[3]
Occasionally, instead of being palsied, the limbs are rigidly bent and cannot be extended.[4] They were contracted, as well as palsied in the case noticed by Bernt.
The last nervous affection to be mentioned is mania. The only instance I have hitherto found of that disease arising from arsenic is related by Amatus Lusitanus. He has not recorded the particulars of the case, but merely observes that the individual became so outrageously mad as to burst his fetters and jump out of the window of his apartment.[5] According to Zacchias, Amatus was not very scrupulous in his adherence to fact in recording cases.
The preceding remarks contain all that is known with certainty of the effect of arsenic on man when it is swallowed. Independently of the obvious nervous disorders which succeed the acute symptoms, other morbid affections of a more obscure character and chronic in their nature have been sometimes observed or supposed to arise from this poison.—Among these the most unequivocal is dyspepsia. Irritability of the stomach, attended with constant vomiting of food, has been occasionally noticed for a long time after. Wepfer has described two cases in which the primary symptoms were followed, in one by dyspepsia of three years' standing, in the other by emaciation and an anomalous fever, which ended fatally in three years.[6]—Hahnemann farther adds, that in the advanced stage the hair sometimes drops out, and the cuticle desquamates, accompanied occasionally with great tenderness of the skin;[7] and Wibmer mentions a case of the kind, where not the cuticle and hair only, but likewise even the nails, fell off.[8] Desquamation of the cuticle and dropping of the nails are at times produced by the continued use of arsenic in medicinal doses.—Other effects have likewise been ascribed to its employment medicinally. Thus passing over what was stated by its
- ↑ Beiträge zur gerichtlichen Arzneikunde, iv. 221.
- ↑ Mem. of London Medical Society, ii. 224.
- ↑ Nova Acta Naturæ Curiosorum, iii. 532.
- ↑ Hahnemann über die Arsenic-Vergiftung, 59.
- ↑ Curationes Medicinales. Cent. ii. Obs. 33.
- ↑ Cicutæ Aquaticæ Historia et Noxæ, 280.
- ↑ Ueber die Arsenic-Vergiftung, 61.
- ↑ Die Wirkung der Arzneimittel und Gifte, i. 266.
