The present objection is generally and perhaps justly considered a stronger one, when it is applied to other species of animals. But it must be confessed after all, that our knowledge of the diversities in the action of poisons on different animals is exceedingly vague, and founded on inaccurate research; and there is much reason to suspect, that, if the subject is studied more deeply, the greater number of the alleged diversities will prove rather apparent than real. Both reasoning and experiment, indeed, render it probable, that some orders, even of the perfect animals, such as the Ruminantia, are much less sensible than man to many poisons, and especially to poisons of the vegetable kingdom. But so far as maybe inferred from the only accurate inquires on the subject, their effects differ in degree more than in kind. Some exceptions will without doubt be found to this statement. For example, oxalic acid, besides inflaming the stomach, causes violent convulsions in animals, but in man it for the most part excites merely excessive prostration; and opium most generally excites in man pure sopor, in animals convulsions also. Other exceptions, too, exist by reason of functional peculiarities in certain animals. Thus irritant poisons do not cause vomiting in rabbits or horses, because these animals cannot vomit; neither do they appear to cause much pain to rabbits, because rabbits have not the power of expressing pain with energy. But exceptions like these, and particularly such as are unconnected with functional peculiarities, will probably prove fewer in number, and less striking than is currently imagined. For it is, on the other hand, well ascertained, that many, indeed most of the active poisons whose effects have been examined by a connected train of experiments, produce nearly the same effects on all animals whatever from the highest to the lowest in the scale of perfection. It has been fully proved, that arsenic, copper, mercury, the mineral acids, opium, strychnia, conia, white hellebore, hydrocyanic acid, cyanogen gas, sulphuretted hydrogen, and many others, produce nearly the same effects on man, quadrupeds, birds, amphibious animals, and even on fishes and insects.[1]*
- ↑ As a specimen of the vague, desultory, and erroneous nature of the investigations which have been made by authors on this subject, I may quote some remarks published by Virey in the Journal Universel (vi. 26), and drawn, he says, from a comparison of statements in various works. He states that arsenic, which is so fatal to animals in general, merely purges dogs and wolves more or less; that nux vomica is less fatal to man than to dogs; that pepper is fatal to hogs, parsley to parrots, the agrostis arundinacea to goats, elder-berries to poultry, chenopodium vulvaria to swine; that on the contrary the goat eats with impunity hemlock, daphne gnidium, and some species of euphorbia; that the camel eats all species of euphorbia, the hedgehog cantharides, the horse monkshood, ranunculus flammula, and buckthorn; asses and mules white hellebore, swine yew-berries; all which are poisonous to animals in general. He does not state special authorities for these facts; but they are taken from authors not of the most modern times, and must be received, in my opinion, with great reserve, notwithstanding the respect which he claims for the older writers. Some of the statements are plainly false. In a more recent paper Virey lays it down as a general principle, that poisons from the inorganic kingdom act more or less on the whole animated creation, but that vegetable and animal poisons are such only in respect to particular animals; that carnivorous animals are more sensible to the action of vegetable poisons, but less so
