lined with minute metallic globules.[1] Perhaps then it must be admitted that fluid mercury is not altogether inactive, speaking medico-*legally. But this admission is no argument in favour of the metal being physiologically a poison; because in the course of the cases referred to, a part is in all likelihood oxidated by the oxygen in the intestinal gases. It is said to have been taken in the dose of an ounce daily for nine months, without either good or harm resulting.[2]
The question regarding the poisonous qualities of running quicksilver was carefully investigated some years ago by the Berlin College of Physicians in a report on the case in Pyl's Repertory.[3] They observe that the opinion of Pliny, Galen, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and many of the earlier moderns, including even Zacchias, had led to the popular belief in the deadly properties of fluid mercury; but that this belief is erroneous; for many surgeons, and among the rest Ambrose Paré, had given without injury to their patients several pounds of it to cure obstructed bowels; and in 1515 the Margrave of Brandenburg, overheated on his marriage night with love and wine, and rising to quench his thirst, drank by mistake a large draught of quicksilver without suffering any harm. Fallopius mentions that he had known instances of women swallowing pounds of mercury, for the purpose of procuring miscarriage, and who did not suffer any injury.[4]
The sulphurets of mercury, like the metal, are not possessed of any deleterious action on the animal body. Orfila found that half an ounce of the sulphuret, formed in a solution of corrosive sublimate by sulphuretted-hydrogen, and half an ounce or six drachms of cinnabar, had no effect whatever on dogs.[5] The sulphurets which have appeared injurious in the hands of Smith[6] and other previous experimentalists must therefore have been impure.
Of the compounds of mercury, the red-precipitate and Turbith-mineral act as irritants, besides possessing the property common to all mercurial compounds, of causing mercurial erethysm. But they are not escharotics, though generally termed such. That is, they do not chemically corrode the animal textures. The effects of red-precipitate have been variable. Mr. Allison relates the case of a girl who in a fit of jealousy swallowed thirty grains of it. Being immediately detected, an emetic was given, which operated freely, and subsequently the stomach-pump was used; but on neither occasion was any red powder brought away. She was attacked with burning pain in the stomach, which was removed by opium, and for a week she had a distaste for food, but no other symptom of consequence.[7]
- ↑ Dr. Sigmond in Lancet, 1837-38, i. 228, from Turner's Treatise on Diseases of the Skin.
- ↑ Ibidem, p. 227.
- ↑ I. 240.
- ↑ Opera Omnia, p. 729.
- ↑ Arch. Gén. de Médecine, xix. 330.
- ↑ Sur l'usage et les Abus des Caustiques. Paris, 1817. Quoted by Wibmer Smith found two drachms kill a dog when swallowed, and half a drachm proved fatal in two dogs when applied to a wound.
- ↑ Lancet, 1836-37, i. 401.
