but the irritability of the voluntary muscles remained. The stomach was not inflamed, but dyed yellow. A very interesting appearance was dyeing of various textures and fluids throughout the body. In the fox killed by swallowing sixteen grains the conjunctiva of the eyes, the aqueous humour, the capsule of the lens, the membranes of the arteries, in a less degree those of the veins, the lungs, and in many places the cellular tissue, had acquired a lemon-yellow colour. The dog killed in the same manner presented similar appearances, also those killed by injection of the poison into the pleura or peritonæum; and in the latter animals the urine was tinged yellow. In a rabbit killed by the application of the poison to a wound the same discoloration was also every where remarked, together with yellowness of the fibrin of the blood. But no yellowness could be seen any where in the dog, which died in twenty-four hours after receiving five grains into the jugular vein. In no instance was there any yellow tint perceptible in the brain or spinal cord.
These facts form an interesting addition to the physiology of poisons. They supply unequivocal proof that this substance is absorbed in the course of its operation, and furnish strong presumption that other poisons, which act on organs remote from the place where they are applied, and which have been sought for without success in the blood, as well as in other fluids and solids throughout the body, have not been detected, merely because the physiologist does not possess such simple and extremely delicate means of searching for them.
The researches of Professor Rapp have been arranged under the title of carbazotic acid, because this acid forms the most prominent substance in the matter with which his experiments appear to have been made. But it is right to state, that the article actually used was, if I understand correctly the abstract given by Buchner, not the pure crystals, but the yellow fluid, from which the crystals are procured, and which contains also a resinous matter and artificial tannin.—The bitter principle of Welther produced by the action of nitric acid on silk, and that formed by Braconnot by the action of the same acid on aloes, appear to be impure carbazotic acid.
CHAPTER XXXI.
OF THE POISONOUS GASES.
The subject of the poisonous gases is one of great importance in
relation to medical police, as well as medical jurisprudence. They
are objects of interest to the medical jurist, because their effects may
be mistaken for those of criminal violence, and because they have
even been resorted to for committing suicide. They are interesting
as a topic of medical police, since some trades expose the workmen
to their influence.
It has hitherto been chiefly on the continent that use has been made of the deleterious gases for the purpose of self-destruction.
