the roots, that they plunged into water, imagining that they were turned into geese, and they were affected for three years with incomplete palsy and neuralgic pains.[1] These and some other cases of the like kind, recorded by the older medical authors, must be received with reserve. Independently of other considerations, there is often no certainty that the poison was really the hemlock of modern botanists, and not some other umbelliferous vegetable.
Morbid Appearances.—In Haaf's case the vessels of the head were much congested; and the blood must have been very fluid, for on the head being opened a quantity flowed out, which twice filled an ordinary chamber-pot. This state of the blood likewise occurred in a case which I examined here some years ago along with Dr. C. Coindet of Geneva. A hypochondriacal old woman took by advice of a neighbour two ounces of a strong infusion of hemlock leaves with the same quantity of whisky, which she swallowed in the morning fasting. She died in an hour, comatose and slightly convulsed. The vessels within the head were not particularly turgid; but the blood was everywhere remarkably fluid. Dr. Coindet subsequently found that a small portion of the infusion prevents fresh drawn blood from coagulating; but I suspect there must have been some mistake here, for a carefully prepared alcoholic extract of very great power, which was used in my experiments alluded to above, had no such effect on blood fresh drawn from rabbits and dogs. On account of this extreme fluidity of the blood, it often flows from the nose, but the skin is much marked with lividity.[2] The fluidity of the blood is nothing more than the result of the proximate cause of death,—slowly formed asphyxia. Of Poisoning with Water-Hemlock.
Another plant of the order Umbelliferæ, the water-hemlock or Cicuta virosa, possesses also great energy as a poison; and in its effects it appears to resemble considerably the hydrocyanic acid. The plant is indigenous. It is easily known from other umbelliferous species inhabiting watery places by the peculiar structure of its root-stock, which is not fleshy, but hollow, and composed of a number of large cells with transverse plates.
From a numerous set of experiments with the root of the cicuta performed by Wepfer, it appears to cause true tetanic convulsions in frequent paroxysms, and death on the third day.[3] Simeon ascertained that the alcoholic extract of the root is very poisonous.[4] Schubarth found that an ounce of the juice of the stems and leaves, collected after the flowers had begun to blow, produced no effect on the dog.[5] It is probably inert, or at all events feebly poisonous in this climate, although it grows luxuriantly in many localities. I have
