frequent watery purging, bilious vomiting, and some fever. These symptoms continued upwards of twelve hours.[1]
The active properties of this substance reside in a peculiar crystalline principle, discovered by Mr. Morries-Stirling, and named by him Elaterine. It is procured by evaporating the alcoholic infusion of elaterium to the consistence of thin oil, and throwing it into boiling distilled water; upon which a white crystalline precipitate is formed, and more falls down as the water cools. This precipitate when purified by a second solution in alcohol and precipitation by water, is pure elaterine. In mass it has a silky appearance. The crystals are microscopic rhombic prisms, striated on the sides. It is intensely bitter. It does not dissolve in the alkalis, or in water, is sparingly soluble in diluted acids, but easily soluble in alcohol, ether, and fixed oil. It has not any alkaline reaction on litmus.—It is a poison of very great activity. A tenth of a grain, as I have myself witnessed, will sometimes cause purging in man; and a fifth of a grain in two doses, administered at an interval of twenty-four hours to a rabbit, killed it seventeen hours after the second dose. The best British elaterium contains 26 per cent. of it, the worst 15 per cent.; but French elaterium does not contain above 5 or 6 per cent.[2] These facts account for the great irregularity in the effects of this drug as a cathartic. The principle discovered by Mr. Morries-Stirling was also discovered about the same time by Mr. Hennell[3] of London. Of Poisoning with the Ranunculaceæ.
The natural family of the Ranunculaceæ abounds in acrid poisons. Indeed few of the genera included in it are without more or less acrid property.
The genus Ranunculus is of some interest to the British toxicologist, because many species grow in this country, and unpleasant accidents have been occasioned by them. The most common are the R. bulbosus, acris, sceleratus, Flammula, Lingua, aquatilis, repens, Ficaria, which are all abundant in the neighbourhood of this city. The Ranunculus acris is the only species that has been particularly examined. Five ounces of juice, extracted by triturating the leaves with two ounces of water, killed a stout dog in twelve hours when taken internally. Two drachms of the aqueous extract applied to a wound killed another in twelve hours by inducing the usual inflammation.[4]
Krapf, as quoted in Orfila's Toxicology, found by experiments on himself, that two drops of the expressed juice of the Ranunculus acris produced burning pain and spasms in the gullet and griping in the lower belly. A single flower had the same effect. When he chewed the thickest and most succulent of the leaves, the salivary glands were strongly stimulated, his tongue was excoriated and
