features, dry tongue, frequent weak pulse, violent colic pains, urgent thirst and headache, and subsequently vomiting and diarrhœa, alternating with great exhaustion and sleepiness. The bread in these instances was made of rye.[1] It appears that in bread so spoiled a variety of mucedonous vegetables are developed, especially the Penicillium glaucum and P. roseum; and it is imagined by some, that this circumstance may account for the deleterious effect of the bread.[2] Of the Effects of Darnel-Grass.
Grain is also rendered more or less injurious by the accidental or intentional admixture of a variety of foreign substances, by which, in common speech, it is said to be adulterated. The subject of the adulteration of grain is a very important topic in medical police. But as this practice seldom imparts to the grain qualities decidedly poisonous, the consideration of it would be misplaced here. One variety, however, the accidental adulteration of flour with the seeds of the Lolium temulentum or darnel-grass calls for some notice; for it may occasion not only symptoms of poisoning, but even also death itself.
This is the only poisonous species of the natural order of the grasses. The seeds appear to be powerfully narcotic, and at the same time to possess acrid properties. Seeger gave a dog three ounces of a decoction of the flour, and observed that it was seized in five hours with violent trembling and great feebleness, which were succeeded in four hours by sopor and insensibility; but it recovered next day.[3]
When mixed with bread and taken habitually by man, darnel-grass has been known to cause headache, giddiness, somnolency, delirium, convulsions, paralysis, and even death. M. Cordier found by experiment on himself, that very soon after eating bread containing darnel-grass flour, he felt confusion of sight and ideas, languor, heaviness, and alternate attacks of somnolency and vomiting. The bread was commonly vomited soon after he ate it.[4] Seeger has related some cases in which the somnolency was much more deep; and states that general tremors are almost always present.[5] A few years ago almost the whole inmates of the Poor's House at Sheffield, to the amount of eighty, were attacked with analogous symptoms after breakfasting on oatmeal porridge; and it was supposed that the meal had been accidentally adulterated with the lolium. The chief symptoms were a piercing stare, violent agitation of the limbs, quivering of the lips, frontal headache, confusion of sight, dilated pupil, small tremulous pulse, twitches of the muscles, and palpitation. In twelve hours all of the persons attacked were well but two, who had strong convulsions in the subsequent night, but also eventually recovered.[6]
- ↑ Journal de Chimie Médicale, vii. 122.
- ↑ Guérard in Annales d'Hygiène-Publique, xxix. 35.
- ↑ Orfila, Toxic. Gén. ii. 466, from Seeger, Diss. Inaug. Tubingæ, 1760.
- ↑ Sur les Effets de l'Ivraie.—Nouv. Journ. de Méd. vi. 379.
- ↑ Orfila, Toxicol. Gén. ii. 466.
- ↑ London Med. and Phys. Journal, xxviii. 182.
