Of fishes which are commonly nutritive, but sometimes acquire poisonous properties, by far the most remarkable is the common Muscle. Opportunities have often occurred for observing its effects,—so often, indeed, that its occasional poisonous qualities have become an important topic of medical police, and in some parts, as in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh and Leith, it has of late been abandoned by many people as an article of food, although generally relished, and in most circumstances undoubtedly safe. This result originated in an accident at Leith in 1827, by which no fewer than thirty people were severely affected and two killed. Of the Symptoms and Morbid Appearances caused by Poisonous Muscles.
The effects of poisonous muscles differ in different cases. Sometimes they have produced symptoms of local irritation only. Thus Foderé mentions the case of a sailor in Marseilles, who, in consequence of eating a large dish of them, died in two days, after suffering from vomiting, nausea, pain in the stomach, tenesmus, and quick contracted pulse. The stomach and intestines were found after death red and lined with an abundant tough mucus.[1] One of the cases described by Dr. Combe, which, however, terminated favourably, is of the same nature. The patient had severe stomach symptoms from the commencement, attended with cramps and ending in peritonitis, which required the frequent use of the lancet.
But much more commonly the local effects have been trifling, and the prominent symptoms have been almost entirely indirect and chiefly nervous. Two affections of this kind have been noticed. One is an eruptive disease resembling nettle-rash, and accompanied with violent asthma; the other a comatose or paralytic disorder of a peculiar description.
Of the former affection several good examples have been recorded in different numbers of the Gazette de Santé.[2] In these the number of muscles eaten was generally small; in one instance ten, in another only six. Nay, in a case related with several others by Möhring in the German Ephemerides, the patient only chewed one muscle and swallowed the fluid part, having spit out the muscle itself.[3] The symptoms have usually commenced between one and two hours after eating, and rapidly attained their greatest intensity. In the patient who was affected by ten muscles the first symptoms were like those of violent coryza; swelling and itching of the eyelids, and general nettle-rash followed; and the eruption afterwards gave place to symptoms of urgent asthma, which were removed by ether. In other cases the symptoms of asthma preceded the eruption. In one instance the eruption did not appear at all. The swelling has not
