ounces of the wine of the seeds, and in whom the symptoms were acute pain, coming on in an hour and a half, then retching, vomiting, and tenesmus, feeble pulse, anxious expression, afterwards incessant coffee-coloured vomiting, suppression of urine, excessive weakness of the limbs and feeble respiration, and, for a short period before death, profuse, dark, watery purging. There was neither insensibility nor convulsions.[1]—Blumhardt relates a similar case caused by an infusion of a large tablespoonful of the seeds. In three-quarters of an hour the man was seized with griping, and then profuse diarrhœa and vomiting. Next morning, twelve hours after the poison was taken, his physician found him still affected with vomiting and purging, but not with pain. He seemed, indeed, to suffer so little, and to improve so much under the use of emollients, that he was thought to be fairly recovering. But next day the pulse was almost imperceptible, the countenance and extremities were cold, the voice hoarse, the breathing hurried, the eyes sunk, the pupils dilated, the epigastrium tender, and the forehead affected with pain; and he died at twelve the same day.[2]
The leaves, too, are poisonous. Dr. Bleifus has related a case in proof of this. A man gathered the leaves in the middle of May, and, after cooking them, ate about two ounces for supper. In six hours he was seized with violent colic, vomiting, and purging. In fifteen hours, when his physician first saw him, the countenance was ghastly as in malignant cholera, the pupils dilated and scarcely contractile, but the mind entire. He complained of rheumatic pains in the neck, and burning pain in the pit of the stomach. He had frequent vomiting and purging, spasms of the muscles of the belly, coldness of the skin, a slow, small, wiry pulse, and cramps of the fingers and the calves of the legs. Coffee and lemon-juice allayed the vomiting, and a temporary amendment ensued. But early on the third morning he became worse, and soon afterwards the narrator of the case found him dying.[3]
The flowers are not less poisonous than the bulbs, leaves, and seeds. A case is noticed in Geiger's Journal of poisoning with a decoction of some handfuls of the flowers, where death occurred within twenty-four hours, under incessant colic, vomiting and purging.[4]
Doubts exist as to the degree of activity of colchicum. Some practitioners direct half an ounce of the tincture of the seeds to be given as a medicinal dose,[5] even four times a-day.[6] Others administer from one to two drachms night and morning. According to more general experience, these are dangerous doses. Dr. Lewins, junior, has seen dangerous symptoms from a drachm given thrice a day for a week;[7] a fatal case occurred a few years ago in the Edinburgh Infirmary, from this amount having been given for a few days
