one of his fatal cases, and likewise others obtained in the shell, and brought to me for analysis, were perfectly fresh.
By some physicians, and especially by Dr. Edwards, their poisonous effects have been referred to idiosyncrasy on the part of the persons who suffer. It can hardly be doubted that this is the cause in some instances. It was formerly mentioned that muscles, oysters, crabs, and even the richer sorts of vertebrated fishes, such as trout, salmon, turbot, holibut, herring, mackerel, are not only injurious to some people, while salutary to mankind generally, but likewise that this singular idiosyncrasy may be acquired. A relation of mine for many years could not take a few mouthfuls of salmon, trout, herring, turbot, holibut, crab, or lobster, without being attacked in a few minutes or hours with violent vomiting; yet at an early period of life, he could eat them all with impunity; and at all times he has eaten without injury cod, ling, haddock, whiting, flounder, oysters, and muscles. Among the cases which have come under Dr. Edwards's notice in Paris, there is one evidently of the same nature. In two others, the idiosyncrasy existed in regard to the muscle, and although in both of these the affection induced was slight, there is no doubt but idiosyncrasy will also account even for some instances of the severe disorders specified above. In particular, it appears sometimes to operate in the production of nettle-rash and asthma; for in the instance quoted from the Gazette de Santé, as arising from ten muscles, it happened that the father of the patient partook very freely of the same dish without sustaining any harm whatever; and in each of three distinct accidents mentioned by Möhring, it appeared that other individuals had eaten of the same dish with equal impunity.[1]
But idiosyncrasy will not account for all the cases of poisoning with muscles, oysters, and other fish. For, passing over other less unequivocal objections, it appears that, when the accident related above happened at Leith, every person who ate the muscles from a particular spot was more or less severely affected; and an important circumstance then observed for the first time was, that animals suffered as severely as man, a cat and a dog having been killed by the suspected article.
Another theory ascribes the poisonous quality to disease in the fish; but no one has hitherto pointed out what the disease is. The poisonous muscles at Leith were large and plump, and seemed to have been chosen on account of their size and good look. Dr. Coldstream, however, at the time a pupil of this University, and a zealous naturalist, thought the liver was larger, darker, and more brittle than in the wholesome fish, and certainly satisfied me that there was a difference of the kind. But whether this was really disease or merely a variety of natural structure, our knowledge of the natural history of the fish hardly entitles us to pronounce.
Considering the failure of all other attempts to account for the injurious properties acquired by muscles, it is extraordinary that no experiments have been hitherto made with the view of discovering in the poisonous fish a peculiar animal principle. It certainly seems
- ↑ De Mytilorum, &c. p. 117, 121, 124.
