- mediately.[1] Orfila suggests an important caution,—not to use a
strong ammoniacal liquor, otherwise the mouth, air-passages, and even the alimentary canal may be attacked with inflammation,—as indeed happened to the French physician whose case was formerly mentioned. The strong aqua ammoniæ should be diluted with several parts of water.
Another remedy of the same kind with ammonia as to action is chlorine. This substance was first proposed as a remedy in 1822 by Riauz, a chemist of Ulm, who found that, when a pigeon, poisoned with hydrocyanic acid, was on the point of expiring, it immediately began to revive, on being made to breathe chlorine, and in fifteen minutes was able to fly away.[2] Buchner repeated Riauz's experiments and arrived at the same results. More lately M. Simeon, apothecary to the hospital of St. Louis at Paris, apparently without being acquainted with the observations of the German chemists, was likewise led to suppose, that this gas might prove a useful antidote;[3] and MM. Cottereau and Vallette have formed the same conclusion.[4] Orfila in his paper already quoted expresses his conviction, that this remedy is the most powerful antidote of all hitherto proposed. His experiments have convinced him, that animals, which have taken a dose of poison sufficient to kill them in fifteen or eighteen minutes, will be saved by inspiring water impregnated with a fourth part of its volume of chlorine, even although the application of the remedy be delayed till the poison has operated for four or five minutes. In some of his experiments he waited till the convulsive stage of the poisoning was passed, and the stage of flaccidity and insensibility had supervened; yet the animals were obviously out of danger ten minutes after the chlorine was first applied, and recovered entirely in three-quarters of an hour.[5]
The last remedy of this nature which deserves notice is the cold affusion. This was first recommended by Dr. Herbst of Göttingen, who, on account of the success he witnessed from it in animals, considers it the best remedy yet proposed. When the dose of the poison was insufficient to prove fatal in ordinary circumstances, two affusions he found commonly sufficient to dispel every unpleasant symptom. When the dose was larger, it was necessary to repeat the effusion more frequently. Its efficacy was always most certain when resorted to before the convulsive stage of the poisoning was over; yet even in the stage of insensibility and paralysis it was sometimes employed with success. In the latter instance the first sign of amendment was renewal of the spasms of the muscles. Many experiments are related by the author in support of these statements. But the most decisive is the following. Two poodles of the same size being selected, hydrocyanic acid was given to one of them in repeated small doses till it died. The whole quantity administered being
