It has been stated by some authors in medical jurisprudence that the dead body occasionally exhales an aliaceous odour, resembling that of sublimed arsenic. This is a very questionable statement. The only fact of the kind worth mentioning is one brought forward by Dr. Klanck, as occurring in the course of certain experiments, which will presently be noticed, on the antiseptic virtues of arsenic. Several animals which had been killed with arsenic are said to have exhaled an odour like that of sublimed arsenic from three to eight weeks after death.[1]
A great discordance of opinion at one time prevailed among authors, as to the influence of arsenic on the putrefactive process in the bodies of those poisoned with it The vulgar idea, borrowed probably from the ancient classics, that the bodies of those who have been poisoned decay rapidly, was till lately the prevalent doctrine of medical men, and even of medical jurists; and it was applied to arsenic as well as other poisons. Even so lately as 1776 we find Gmelin stating in his History of Mineral Poisons, that the bodies of those who have died of arsenic pass rapidly into putrefaction, that the nails and hair often fall off the day after death, and that almost the whole body quickly liquefies into a pulp.[2] A similar statement has been made in 1795 by a respectable author, Dr. John Johnstone.[3] It appears that this rapid or premature decay does really occur in some instances. Thus in a case related by Plattner of death from arsenic administered as a seasoning for mushrooms, the body had a very putrid odour the day after death.[4] Loebel also asserts he found by experiments on animals, that after death from arsenic putrefaction took place rapidly, even in very cold weather.[5]
In other instances the body probably decays in the usual manner. For example, in Rust's Magazin is related the case of a child who died in six hours of poisoning with arsenic, and in whose body, fourteen days after death, the integuments were found considerably advanced in putrefaction, and the liver and kidneys beginning to soften.[6] In the case of a man who died in two days, and in whose body arsenic was found by MM. Chapeau and Parisel throughout many of the tissues, "putrefaction was so far advanced eight days after death as to render the examination of parts obscure."[7] And in the course of some experiments on dogs poisoned with the oxide Dr. Seeman found the usual changes after five months' interment.[8]
But it has been proved in recent times that in general arsenic has rather the contrary tendency—that, besides the antiseptic virtues which it has been long known to exert when directly applied in moderate quantity to animal substances, it also possesses the singular
- ↑ Augustin's Repertorium. Neue Entdeckungen betreffend die Kennzeichen der Arsenic-vergiftung, I. i. 30.
- ↑ Geschichte der Mineralischen Gifte.
- ↑ Essay on Mineral Poisons, 36.
- ↑ Quæst. Medicinæ Forenses, 206.
- ↑ Jaeger, de Effectibus Arsenici, p. 47.
- ↑ Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, xx. 485.
- ↑ Bulletins de l'Acad. Roy. de Méd. v. 137.
- ↑ Geiger's Magazin für Pharmacie, xxxii. 301, from Seeman's Dissert. Inaug. Berolini, 1824.
