of the stomach; but the chief affection was excessive swelling of the face and throat, together with profuse ptyalism.[1]
One of the readiest modes of bringing the system under the poisonous action of mercury is by introducing its preparations into the lungs. It appears from some experiments by Schlöpfer that the fluid preparations act rapidly through the lining membrane of the air-passages. Six grains of corrosive sublimate in solution will thus kill a rabbit in five minutes.[2] But the effects of mercury through this channel are much better exemplified when its preparations are inhaled in the form of vapour. Corrosive sublimate when incautiously sublimed in chemical experiments has been known to cause serious effects. Dr. Coldstream of Leith informs me, that while subliming about twenty-four grains of it with the blowpipe when a student, he and several of his fellow-apprentices were seized with painful constriction of the throat, several had headache, and one had sickness and vomiting. The phenomena produced by the various preparations of mercury in more violent cases, are sometimes protracted tremors,[3] sometimes severe ptyalism and tedious dysentery,[4] sometimes salivation and gangrene of the mouth ending fatally.[5] This last form was produced remarkably in a chimney-sweeper, after cleaning a gilder's chimney, during which operation he felt a disagreeable sense of tightness in the throat.
Several extraordinary instances have happened of poisoning from long-continued inhalation of the vapours which arise from metallic mercury. That vapours do arise from metallic mercury of the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere has been fully proved by Mr. Faraday; who found, that when a bit of gold was suspended from the top of a phial, the bottom being covered with a little mercury, the gold soon became amalgamated.[6] The vapours thus discharged may produce the worst species of mercurialism, if they are diffused through an apartment insufficiently ventilated. One of the most striking examples known of the baneful effects of mercury thus gradually insinuated into the system, occurred in a well-known accident which befel the ships Triumph and Phipps. These vessels were carrying home in 1810 a large quantity of quicksilver saved from the wreck of a ship near Cadiz, when by some accident several of the bags were burst and the mercury spilled. On the voyage home the whole crews of both vessels were more or less severely salivated, two died, many were dangerously ill, all the copper articles on board became amalgamated, all the rats, mice, cockroaches, and other insects, as well as a canary-bird and several fowls, and all larger animals, such as cats, dogs, goats, and sheep were destroyed.[7]
The action of mercury is often violently excited when it is applied to the skin even not deprived of the cuticle. The effects of
- ↑ Wibmer. Die Wirkung der Arzneimittel und Gifte, iii. 46.
- ↑ Diss. Inaug. de Effectibus Liquidorum in vias aëriferas applicatorum, p. 35.
- ↑ Hufeland's Journal, xlii.
- ↑ Mr. Hill in Edin. Med. Ess. iv. 38.
- ↑ Corvisart's Journal, xxv. 209.
- ↑ London Journal, of Science, x 354.
- ↑ Edin. Med. and Surg. Journal, vi. 513, and London Medical and Physical Journal, xxvi. 29.
