conspicuous a feature in the action of the compounds of mercury on man. Dr. Campbell observed mercurial fetor, and M. Gaspard mercurial salivation. Another writer, Zeller, found that dogs might be made to salivate, but not graminivorous animals.[1] Schubarth, however, remarked profuse salivation in a horse, to which twenty-four ounces of strong mercurial ointment were administered in the way of friction in sixteen days:[2] and I observed the same symptoms in a rabbit on the sixth day after the commencement of daily mercurial inunction.
The result of the preceding inquiry is, that corrosive sublimate causes, when swallowed, corrosion of the stomach, and in whatever way it obtains entrance into the body, irritation of that organ and of the rectum, inflammation of the lungs, depressed action and perhaps also inflammation of the heart, oppression of the functions of the brain, inflammation of the salivary glands. These phenomena are diversified enough. But it will presently be found that other organs still are implicated in its effects on man.
Before proceeding, however, to its effects on man, some notice may be taken of a question, connected with its mode of action, which has long been the subject of controversy. The experiments already quoted render it probable that corrosive sublimate, before it can exert its remote action, must enter the blood; and the facts to be enumerated under the next head of the present section will render it probable that the milder compounds of mercury used in medicine also act in a similar manner. Physicians and chemists, therefore, long sought to discover this metal in the solids and fluids of the body while under its influence; and the failure of some attempts to detect it has naturally led to its presence throughout the system being called in question by many. This inquiry, besides its interest in a physiological point of view, is highly important in respect to medico-legal practice, since it forms a material branch of the general questions which at present occupy the attention of medical jurists,—whether poisons that act through the blood should be sought for by chemical analysis in other parts of the body besides the stomach, intestines, or other organ to which they have been directly applied—and in what particular quarters the search should be principally made.
In the case of mercury, the evidence of the absorption of the poison, and of its entering the tissues and secretions of the body, is now unimpeachable. This is chiefly derived from observations and experiments made on man and animals after the long-continued use of the milder preparations of mercury; it being imagined that if the poison enters the blood at all, the greatest quantity will be found under these circumstances. The facts may be arranged under three heads. Some relate to the discharge of metallic mercury from the living body during a mercurial course for medicinal purposes; others to the discovery of metallic mercury in the dead body after a mercurial
