- tained rather more than a quarter of a grain of globules; two pounds
of saliva yielded in the same way a 200th of a grain; and the urine contained so much that it became brownish-black with sulphuretted-hydrogen.[1] Buchner likewise adds, that Professor Pickel of Würzburg procured mercury by destructive distillation from the brain of a venereal patient who had long taken corrosive sublimate.[2] Not less satisfactory are the experiments of Dr. Schubarth. A horse after being rubbed for twenty-nine days with mercurial ointment to the total amount of eighty ounces, died of fever, emaciation, diarrhœa, and ptyalism. On the sixteenth day, when ptyalism had set in, a quart of blood was drawn from the jugular vein, and after death another quart was collected from the heart, great vessels and lungs,—extreme care being taken to collect it perfectly pure. In each specimen there was procured by destructive distillation a liquor, in which minute metallic globules were visible. A copper coin agitated in the liquor was whitened; and when the oily matter was separated by filtration and boiling in alcohol, the residue gave with nitric acid a solution, which produced an orange precipitate with hydriodate of potass.
These researches were considered adequate to prove the strong probability of the absorption of mercurial preparations when introduced into the animal. But the frequency with which negative results were obtained by competent inquirers, and in circumstances apparently favourable, threw an air of doubt over the positive facts, however clear they seem to be in themselves,—till at length Professor Orfila proved by a series of careful experiments that the cause of failure must generally have been the want of a process sufficiently delicate: for in all ordinary circumstances, by using his process described above, he succeeded in obtaining mercury in the urine and liver of animals poisoned with corrosive sublimate, as well as in the urine of patients who were taking that salt in medicinal doses. He could not detect it, however, in the blood.[3] Since these investigations, Professor Landerer of Athens detected mercury in the brain, liver, lungs and spinal cord of a man who poisoned himself with two ounces and a half of corrosive sublimate;[4] and M. Audouard has twice found it in the urine and once in the saliva of persons salivated with mercury, by simply transmitting chlorine, exposing the liquid to the air for a day, evaporating it nearly to dryness, dissolving the residue in water slightly acidulated with hydrochloric acid, immersing copper-leaf for twenty-four hours, and heating the stained portions in a tube.[5]
The cases of poisoning with the preparations of mercury, which have been observed in the human subject, may be conveniently arranged under three varieties. In one variety the sole or leading symptoms are those of violent irritation of the alimentary canal.
