which she slowly recovered. At all times she was so sensible as to be able to tell how the accident happened.—Dr. Ballardini of Brescia met with twelve simultaneous cases of poisoning with the juice of the leaves, used by mistake for scurvy-grass [Cochlearia officinalis]. Each person had three ounces of juice. Three of them died in two hours; but the rest were saved. The chief symptoms were extreme weakness and anxiety, paleness and distortion of the features, dilatation of the pupils, dulness of the eyes, giddiness, headache, chiefly occipital, some distension and pain of the belly, vomiting of a green matter, and in some diarrhœa. The whole body was cold, the nails livid, the limbs cramped, the pulse small and scarcely perceptible. In the fatal cases there were convulsions.[1]—MM. Pereyra and Perrin mention, that, while using the alcoholic extract in the Hospital of St. André at Bordeaux, the sample of the drug happened to be changed when the dose had been raised so high as ten grains; and that the patients who were taking it were then all seized with burning in the mouth and throat, vomiting, pungent pains in the extremities, cold sweating, anxiety, extreme general prostration, great slowness and irregularity of the pulse, convulsions, and congestion in the venous system. One patient died; the others recovered under no other treatment than stimulant friction along the spine.[2] An infant at Suippe, in the French Department of the Marne, ate a few leaves and flowers of monkshood, while walking in a garden. Soon afterwards he began to stagger as if tipsy, and to complain of pain in the belly. In two hours an emetic was given; but a few minutes afterwards, the eyes became convulsed, the jaws locked, the trunk bent rigidly backward, and the limbs convulsed; and death ensued in five minutes more.[3]
Morbid Appearances.—In Ballardini's fatal cases the pia mater and arachnoid were much injected; there was much serosity under the arachnoid and in the base of the cranium; the lungs were considerably gorged with blood; the heart and great vessels contained but a little black fluid blood: the villous coat of the stomach was spotted with red points; and the small intestines presented inwardly red patches and much mucus. In the Bordeaux case there was venous congestion in the head and chest, the lungs particularly being much gorged with blood. The right side of the heart was full of blood, of gelatinous consistence. In Pallas's cases the gullet, stomach, small intestines and rectum were very red, the lungs dense, dark, and gorged, and the cerebral vessels turgid.
Few trustworthy observations have been made on the effects of the other species of aconite. Dr. Pereira found the A. ferox of the East Indies to be a much more deadly poison to animals than common monkshood; but its effects were otherwise identical.[4] Three grains of the root put into the throat of a rabbit, killed it in nineteen mi-*
