described. Professor Foderé has given a good example of its effects on man, as they occurred in the crew of a French corvette in the Archipelago. The plant was boiled and distributed among the whole ship's company, as several of the sailors said they knew it to be eatable and salubrious. But in no long time they were all seized with giddiness, vomiting, convulsions, colic, purging, and delirium of the active kind. They were all soon relieved by emetics and purgatives.[1]
Dr. Archibald Hamilton has described a case of the same nature, which was caused by the seeds of this plant. A young medical student, who took about twenty-five grains of the seeds, was seized in half an hour with lassitude and somnolency, and successively with dryness of the throat, impeding deglutition, convulsive movements of the arms, incoherency, total insensibility of the skin, and loss of recollection. These symptoms continued about twelve hours, and then slowly receded.[2]
Three other species, the H. aureus, physaloides and scopolia are represented by Orfila to be equally deleterious. The alkaloid hyoscyamus possesses in an intense degree the active properties of the plant. It has not been hitherto examined in this respect with much care. But extremely minute quantities produce excessive enlargement of the pupil, when put within the eyelids in the form of neutral salt. Treatment. The treatment of poisoning with hyoscyamus consists in removing the poison, diminishing cerebral congestion, and restoring sensibility. It is therefore substantially the same as in poisoning with opium, except that general or local evacuation of blood is more frequently required, in consequence of the greater tendency of hyoscyamus to induce determination of blood towards the head and congestion there. It has been lately alleged by an Italian author that a large dose of lemon juice is an immediate antidote for the effects of too large a medicinal dose, even when the poison was administered in the form of injection.[3] This does not seem probable. Of Poisoning with Lactuca.
Allied in its effects, but greatly inferior in power to opium and hyoscyamus, is the Lactuca virosa, together with the Lettuce-opium, or inspissated juice of L. sativa, and L. virosa.
Orfila found that three drachms of the extract of L. virosa introduced into the stomach of a dog killed it in two days, without causing any remarkable symptom; that two drachms applied to a wound in the back induced giddiness, slight sopor, and death in three days; and that thirty-six grains injected in a state of solution into the jugular vein caused dulness, weakness, slight convulsions, and death in
