she had incessant retching and vomiting, with great faintness and cold sweats in the intervals, some salivation and swelling of the lips, and a pulse feeble, irregular, intermitting, and not above 40. She had also suppression of urine for three days.[1]
A somewhat similar instance may be found in the Journal de Médecine. A man, fifty-five years old took by mistake a drachm instead of a grain for asthma, and was attacked in an hour with vomiting, giddiness, excessive debility, so that he could not stand, loss of sight, colic, and slow pulse. These effects continued more or less for four days, when the vomiting ceased; and the other symptoms then successively disappeared, the vision, however, remaining depraved for nearly a fortnight.[2]
A very interesting fatal case, which arose from an over-dose administered by a quack doctor, and which became the ground of a criminal trial at London in 1826, is shortly noticed in the same Journal. Six ounces of a strong decoction when taken as a laxative early in the morning. Vomiting, colic, and purging, were the first symptoms; towards the afternoon lethargy supervened; about midnight the colic and purging returned; afterwards general convulsions made their appearance; and a surgeon, who saw the patient at an early hour of the succeeding morning, found him violently convulsed, with the pupils dilated and insensible, and the pulse, slow, feeble, and irregular. Coma gradually succeeded, and death took place in twenty-two hours after the poison was swallowed.[3]
This is the only case in which I have seen an account of the appearances in the dead body, and they are related imperfectly. It is merely said that the external membranes of the brain were much injected with blood, and the inner coat of the stomach red in some parts.
The affections induced by poisoning with digitalis are often much more lasting than the effects of most other vegetable narcotics. Dr. Blackall's case is one instance in point, and another no less remarkable in its details is described in Corvisart's Journal. The usual local and constitutional symptoms were produced by a drachm of the powder being taken by mistake; and the slowness of the pulse did not begin to go off for seven days, the affection of the sight not for five days more.[4]
The preparations of foxglove are very uncertain in strength. From what I have observed in the course of their medicinal employment, I conceive few powders retain the active properties of the leaves, and even not many tinctures. Two ounces of the tincture of the London College have been taken in two doses with a short interval between them, yet without causing any inconvenience.[5] This assuredly could not happen with a sound preparation.
