The essential oil is not much inferior in activity to the pure hydrocyanic acid. A single drop of it applied by Sir B. Brodie on the tongue of a cat caused violent convulsions and death in five minutes.[1] But more generally a larger dose, or about seven drops, has been found necessary to kill a middle-sized dog. Five drops, according to Göppert, will kill a rabbit in six minutes. When entirely freed of hydrocyanic acid, it becomes, as already mentioned, not more poisonous than common volatile oils.
Symptoms in Man.—The effects of the almond and of the oil upon man are equally striking with those of hydrocyanic acid.
In small doses the bitter almond produces disorder of the digestive organs, nausea, vomiting, and sometimes diarrhœa. These symptoms are occasionally brought on by the small quantities used for flavouring sweetmeats, if the confectioner has not been careful in compounding them. Virey says that accidents occasionally happen to children at Paris from their eating freely of macaroons, which are sometimes too strongly flavoured with the bitter almond.[2] In this country accidents from the same cause may be with justice apprehended, as confectioners now generally use, not the bitter almond, but its essential oil, which is distilled for the purpose in London, and sold in the druggists shops under the name of peach-nut oil. Göppert suggests that this oil ought to be freed of its hydrocyanic acid by repeated distillation with caustic potassa, because the flavour is not in the least injured by the process, while its activity as a poison is greatly lessened.
In peculiar constitutions the minutest quantity, even a single almond, will cause a state resembling intoxication, succeeded by an eruption like nettle-rash. The late Dr. Gregory was subject to be affected in this way. Other vegetable bitters had the same effect on him, but none so remarkably as bitter almonds. They caused first sickness, generally tremors, then vomiting, next a hot fit with an eruption of urticaria, particularly on the upper part of the body. At the same time the face, and head swelled very much, and there was generally a feeling like intoxication. The symptoms lasted only for a few hours. The rash did not alternately appear and disappear as in common nettle-rash.[3] A lady of my acquaintance is liable to be attacked with urticaria even from eating the sweet almond.
The quantity of bitter almonds which may be eaten with impunity is unknown; but Wibmer mentions an experimentalist who took half an ounce without any other effect besides headache and sickness.[4] Two cases of death in the human subject from eating them have been quoted by Coullon from the Journal de Médecine of Montpellier. One is a doubtful case, but the other is unequivocal. A bath-woman gave her child the "expressed juice" of a handful of bitter almonds to cure worms. The child, who was four years old, was immediately attacked with colic, swelling of the belly, giddiness, locked jaw, frothing at the mouth, general convulsions, and insen-*
