Thomson's Conspectus of the British pharmacopoeias.

  • Anthony Todd Thomson
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thomson's Conspectus of the British pharmacopoeias. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    206/248 page 178
    Morbid Appearances. An ex-sanguine appearance of the intestines; but occasionally there is inflammation of the mucous membrane of the intestines, sometimes attended with blotches of extravasated blood. When the death of the patient is not sudden, the mesenteric and lymphatic glands are inflamed and obstructed; and all the viscera bear more or less evidence of having suffered from increased vascular action: and lead has been found in the muscles of the part previously paralysed. Test. When the poison has been swallowed in the solid form, and any of it can be obtained, it may be known in some degree by its colour and weight, or by rubbing it in a mortar with a little spirituous solu- tion of guaiac, and a few drops of liquid ammonia, which produce a beautiful grass green, passing to glaucous when lead is present; it is tinged brown when it is exposed to sulphuretted hydrogen gas; or it may be dissolved in weak, nitric acid, and the solution precipitated by iodide of potassium ; if lead be present, the yellow iodide of that metal will be formed: but it is still more certainly detected by reducing it to a metallic state upon charcoal, by means of the blowpipe. When it has been taken in syrup, or in wine, or in Hollands, to improve which it is often ignorantly and improperly used, first render the coloured fluids colourless by chlorine, and then add to different portions the following re-agents: — Sulphate of potassa, which will produce a white; sulphuretted hydrogen, which will throw down a black; and chromate of potassa, which will exhibit a canary yellow precipitate,if any salt of lead be present; or dissolve in acetic acid, and add to the solution a solution of iodide of potassium; if the poison be carbonate of lead, a yellow iodide of lead will be precipitated. Treatment. Bleed, if the pulse be hard; then freely exhibit cathartics, particularly castor oil, and sulphate of magnesia combined with opium or extract of hyoscyamus; use the warm bath,and throw up repeatedly injections of mutton broth and demulcents. The patient should drink very freely mucilaginous liquids. When convalescent, he should live almost entirely on a milk diet. If paralysis of the limbs continue, it should be treated with strychnia. The action of acetate of lead, and of red oxide of lead or litharge, on the animal economy, is nearly the same as that of the carbonate of lead; consequently the above observations apply to all the salts of lead. CARBONIC ACID GAS. This gas is often extricated very largely in various processes of art, and in burning charcoal in close rooms, so as to produce suspended animation and death. As it is also very heavy, it remains in fermenting vats and beer cellars long after the liquor has been drawn off or removed, so as to destroy individuals who in- cautiously enter them. Symptoms. Great drowsiness, difficulty of respiration, and suffocation. The features appear swelled and the face bluish, as in cases of stran- gulation ; but the eyes remain as brilliant as in health, even after death. Test. Invert immediately, before the air of the place has been disturbed, a bottle filled with lime-water in the atmosphere which has occasioned the suspended animation or the death of the person immersed in it, until one half of the fluid runs out: and at the same time introduce a lighted taper into the same atmosphere. If the taper be extinguished, and lime-water, on being shaken in the bottle, becomes milky, the deleterious gas is carbonic acid gas. Treatment. Remove the body into the open air; apply friction, par- ticularly over the thorax and on the soles of the feet; then endeavour to stimulate the organs of respiration to a renewed action by inflating the lungs with common air, or, if it can be procured, oxygen gas, by means of the double bellows, and a flexible tube introduced into the trachea through the nostrils. Stimulate, cautiously, the nostrils with ammonia, and dash cold water on the face and chest.
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