- nutes; one grain of the alcoholic extract, introduced into the peritonæum,
proved equally deadly. Nine grains will kill a cat in four hours.[1]Of the other aconites the A. cammarum, and A. lycoctonum are said to have proved fatal frequently in Germany; but no accurate facts on the subject are on record.—It was stated above that the A. paniculatum, supposed by De Candolle to have been the true aconite of Baron Störck, is inert in this country. I introduced the alcoholic extract of three ounces of the fresh leaves collected near the end of June, into the cellular tissue between the skin and muscles of a young rabbit, having previously converted the extract into an emulsion with mucilage and water. This was four times the dose of A. napellus, which I had found sufficient to kill a strong adult rabbit in two hours and a quarter; but no effect whatever was produced.—Mr. Ramsay of Broughty Ferry has described a case of fatal poisoning with a handful of aconite leaves which were mistaken for parsley, and which he supposes to have been those of A. neomontanum. The subject, a boy of fourteen, was attacked with a sense of burning in the mouth, throat, and stomach, afterwards with vomiting and convulsions, and died considerably within five hours.[2] The very feeble taste of this species—which besides is little cultivated in Scotland,—inclines me to doubt whether it was the species that produced such violent effects.
Of Poisoning with Black Hellebore.
Black hellebore, or Christmas-rose, the Helleborus niger of botanists, is a true narcotico-acrid poison. It is a doubtful native of this country. It produces a large white ranunculus-like flower about mid-*winter. The root, the only part used in medicine, or to be found in the shops, consists of a short root-stock and numerous, long, black undivided rootlets. The fresh root in January is not acrid to the taste. Its active principle appears from the researches of MM. Feneulle and Capron, to be an oily matter containing an acid.[3]
Its action has not yet been examined with particular care. Two or three drachms of the root killed a dog in eighteen hours, when swallowed; two drachms killed another in two hours, when applied to a wound; and six grains in a wound caused death in twenty-three hours. In all cases the leading symptoms are efforts to vomit, giddiness, palsy of the hind-legs, and insensibility.[4] Ten grains of the extract introduced into the windpipe killed a rabbit in six minutes.[5] Orfila found redness of the rectum, when the animals survived a few hours. But none of these experiments show the powerful irritant action exerted by the root upon man.
The Bulletins of the Medical Society of Emulation mention two cases of poisoning with hellebore, which arose from the ignorance of
