Little need be said of the practice to be pursued in the advanced stages of poisoning with arsenic, when convalescence has begun. The principal object is to support the system by mild nourishment, avoiding at the same time stimulant diet of every kind, but especially spirituous and vinous liquors. Whatever may be the difference of results obtained with the antiphlogistic mode of cure, the opposite system has been invariably detrimental in the advanced stage.
The treatment of the nervous and dyspeptic affections, which may supervene after the symptoms of local inflammation have ceased, is not a fit object of review in this work, as it would lead to great details.
CHAPTER XIV.
OF POISONING WITH MERCURY.
The next genus of the metallic poisons includes the preparations
of mercury. Some of these are hardly less important than the arsenical
compounds. They act with equal energy, produce the same
violent symptoms, and cause death with the same rapidity. They
have therefore been often given with a criminal intent; and have
thus become the subject of inquiry upon trials. In another respect,
too, they claim the regard of the medical jurist: their effects on the
body, when insidiously introduced in the practice of the arts in which
mercury is used, form a branch of that department of medical police,
which treats of the influence of trades on the health.
Section I.—Of the Chemical History and Tests for the preparations of Mercury.
Mercury is a fluid metal, exceedingly brilliant, of a silver-white colour, and of the specific gravity 13·568.
When heated to about 660° F. it sublimes, and on cooling it condenses unchanged. If this experiment is made in a small glass tube, the metal forms a white ring of brilliant globules, which may be made to coalesce into a single large one. In this way its physical properties may be recognised, though the quantity is exceedingly minute.
Two oxides of this metal, a protoxide and peroxide, exist in combination with acids. A bluish-gray or grayish-black protoxide is separated from the salts of the protoxide by the fixed alkalis. The peroxide has an orange-red colour, and is the common red precipitate of the apothecary. Mercury unites with sulphur in two proportions. The protosulphuret, which is black, is formed from the salts of the protoxide by the action of sulphuretted-hydrogen: the bisulphuret is the well known pigment, cinnabar or vermilion. Mercury likewise unites with chlorine in two proportions, forming an insoluble protochloride and a soluble bichloride, the former calomel, the latter
