a quack-doctor. Both persons, after taking a decoction of the root, were seized in forty-five minutes with vomiting, then with delirium, and afterwards with violent convulsions. One died in two hours and a half, the other in less than two hours.[1] Morgagni has related a case which proved fatal in about sixteen hours, the leading symptoms of which were pain in the stomach, and vomiting. The dose in this instance was only half a drachm of the extract.[2] In a case not fatal, related by Dr. Fahrenhorst, the symptoms were those of irritant poisoning generally, that is, burning pain in the stomach and throat, violent vomiting, to the extent of sixty times in the first two hours, cramps of the limbs, and cold sweating. The most material symptoms were at this time quickly subdued by sinapisms to the belly and anodyne demulcents given internally; and in four days the patient was well. The dose here was a table-spoonful of the root in fine powder.[3] In small doses of ten or twenty grains, it is well known to be a powerful purgative to man. I have known severe griping produced by merely tasting the fresh root in January.
The morbid appearances in Morgagni's case were the signs of inflammation in the digestive canal, particularly in the great intestines. In the case described in the French Bulletins, there was gorging of the lungs, and the stomach had a brownish-black colour as if gangrenous.
The other species of hellebore have not been carefully examined; but it is probable that they all possess similar properties. The H. hyemalis and viridis are said by Buchner to be weaker than the H. niger; and the H. fœtidus is the most poisonous of all.[4] CHAPTER XXXVI. OF POISONING WITH SQUILL, MEADOW-SAFFRON, WHITE HELLEBORE, AND FOXGLOVE. The natural family Liliaceæ, and the allied family, Melanthaceæ, contain many species which possess narcotico-acrid properties. Those which are best known in Europe are squill, meadow-saffron, cevadilla, and white hellebore. To these may be added foxglove, as possessing properties in some measure analogous, and also rue and ipecacuan. Of Poisoning with Squill.
The root of the squill, or Squilla maritima, possesses the properties of the narcotico-acrids. Orfila's experiments on animals, indeed, assign to it only an action on the nervous system. He found that
