One of these poisons, contained in the blood and perhaps in some of the secretions of overdriven cattle, arises under circumstances in which the body seems to deviate little from its natural condition. A good account of the effects thus induced has been given in an essay on the subject by Morand.[1] From the cases he describes it follows, that the flesh of such animals is wholesome enough when cooked and eaten; but that if the blood or raw flesh be applied to a wound or scratch, nay even sometimes to the unbroken skin, a dangerous and often fatal inflammation is excited, which at times differs little from diffuse cellular inflammation, and at other times consists of a general eruption of gangrenous boils, the pustules malignes of the French. The deleterious effects occasionally observed to arise from offal are probably analogous in their nature and their cause. On this subject Sir B. Brodie has made some remarks which tend to show that the application of various kinds of offal to wounds, and especially pricks of the fingers with spiculæ of bone from the hare, may cause an obstinate chronic erysipelas of the hand.[2] I have met with a case of this nature, where the affection was erratic erythema of the hand.
Another species of poison, allied to the preceding in its effects and equally obscure in its nature, includes certain fluids of the human body after natural death, which are probably modified, if not even formed altogether, by morbid processes during life. Such poisons are the most frequent source of the dreadful cellular inflammation, often witnessed as the consequence of pricks received during dissection by the anatomist. On this interesting but obscure subject, much minute information will be found in the works quoted below.[3]
It is still a matter of question among pathologists what these poisons are, and in what circumstances they spring up. By some their baneful properties have been suspected to arise from the operation of particular diseases on natural or morbid secretions;[4] and although the precise diseases inducing these properties, and the precise fluids which acquire them have by no means been satisfactorily ascertained, it appears well established that no fluid possesses them more frequently or in a higher degree than the serum effused into the cavities of the chest and belly by recent inflammation of the serous membranes of these cavities. By others the origin of the poison is suspected to be wholly independent of diseased action in the living body and to lie merely in certain changes effected in healthy secretions by decay. And as the accidents produced by this poison have occurred chiefly during the dissection of bodies recently dead, it is supposed to exist only for a short time at the commencement of decay, and to disappear in the farther progress of putrefaction.
But whatever may be its nature and origin, we are well enough acquainted with its effects; which are diffuse inflammation and
- ↑ Histoire d'une Maladie très-singulière, &c. in Hist. de l'Académie des Sciences, 1766, i 97.
- ↑ London Med. and Phys. Journal, lvii. 342.
- ↑ Dr. Duncan's Cases of Diffuse Inflammation of the cellular texture—in Edin. Med. Chirurg. Trans. i. 455, 470, 1824. Also,
- ↑ Mr. Travers on Constitutional Irritation, 1826.
