Monthly retrospect of the medical sciences : January to December 1849 / edited by George E. Day, Alexander Fleming, W.T. Gairdner.

Date:
MDCCCXLIX [1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Monthly retrospect of the medical sciences : January to December 1849 / edited by George E. Day, Alexander Fleming, W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/262 (page 23)
    in adults, the urine is always superabun¬ dant, pale and watery, as in hysterical at¬ tacks, and may lead the case to be mis¬ taken for diabetes insipidus. In children, where dyspepsia commonly occurs, the stools are sometimes fluid, sometimes very costive, and always deficient in bile. In older children, the complaints which they make of various sorts of pains, especially in the legs, appear to depend upon spinal irritation. They are capricious, and in the intervals often placid, and when they are exposed to the vapours for years they acquire remarkably old features. Eachi- tic appearances in their growth have not been observed. In those who have been chronically affected by the arsenic, an irri¬ table frame of mind is always observed. When all the inhabitants of such apart¬ ments do not suffer equally, this depends upon the employment of some keeping them more out of the dwelling-house, or from a greater individual power of re¬ sistance. The periodic exacerbation of the injurious effects, is in general expli¬ cable by tbe more hygrometric state of the atmosphere, by cooking in the house, and the washing of the floors, all of which tend to increase the emanations. It is re¬ markable that such colours often stand a long time, and then the action of the air and the emanations commence suddenly, as in the putrefaction of organic matters. But apartments with thick coatings of such arsenical colours have a smell, even when the walls are quite dry. Sudden al¬ ternations of temperature, moisture in the atmosphere, cooking in the rooms, the exhalations and sweat of those sleeping in them, supply moisture to the walls. Recently, on one occasion, the author per¬ ceived the smell of arsenic in a perfectly dry room with a green paper, and he found, on more particuler inquiry, that the day before much electricity had been evolved in it from a strong machine. This recalled to his recollection what an inha¬ bitant had told him, that in a green room of his, the smell was observed only when there was much thunder or lightning. Ac¬ cording to the author’s observations, also. It is very injurious for the lungs, when, even in a dry room, persons sleep so near the wall that their breath comes directly m contact with it. Solar light appears to play a part in the decomposition of the colour; for the au¬ thor found the arsenical odour always strongest in apartments with an east or south exposui-e, and he supposes that it is probably from the non-admission of light that those experiments have failed, which tiled to demonstrate by re-agents the ar- senial nature of the emanations from shut boxes lined with green paper, and kept constantly moist. _ Besides the cases communicated by the district physicians, as noticed above, the author appends to his essay a number of cases observed by himself, to afford proof that, from the employment of green ar- seniferous pigments, cases of poison¬ ing by them almost occur daily, and he calls attention to the yearly in¬ crease in the amount of such colours used, which are applied rather ex¬ tensively, not only to paper hangings, wall painting, floor cloths, table covers, verandahs, window blinds, screens, tin plate wares, fruit baskets, sugar canis¬ ters, cans, nursery stone wares, &c. &c., but also to materials of clothing; for, ac¬ cording to an apothecary, M. Jonas, there are samples of green calicoes which are so covered with arseniate of chromium, that thirty yards will yield as much as half a pound of arsenious acid; so that, when a small scrap of this is burned at a candle, the whole apartment becomes filled with arsenical vapours_Fiom Casper's Wochenschrift, 27—29,1848, in Schmidt’s Jahrhilcher, No. 9, 1848. [Duflos in his treatise on hygiene (Die wichtigste Lebensbedurfnisse, &c.) casually alludes to the deleterious action of Scheele’s green used as house paint, and mentions that in Reichenstein in Silesia, an arsenical sand has been commonly em¬ ployed for making mortar, which, under the^ combined influence of the lime and moisture, ought, on chemical considera¬ tions, to evolve arseniuretted hydrogen, yet the families living in them preserve their health well, and therefore its effect must be trifling. We suspect that Dr Basedow has made a hobby of this subject, and is riding it rather hard.] 36. Typha latifolia as an Alimentary Suhstance.~T:he. Typha latifolia, L., and T. Augustifolia, L., [greater and lesser Reed mace], are well-known reeds which grow spontaneously and abxmdantly in many of the marshes of France, and sometimes form diminutive forests there. A recent account confirms a statement long ago made by Dr Clarke, and now forgotten, that the young shoots, soon after their development on the rhizome, are eaten with great avidity by the Cossacks, as we do asparagus, and they have been called Cossacks’ asparagus. They are gathered chiefly in spring. The rhizome itself, which is large, fleshy, and feculent, is said to be eaten by the Kalmucks. As the plant grows wild and abundantly, and could be easily propagated, it might be more extensively used.—X’l/niow Mid. No. 136.