The influence of sewer emanations / by T. Herbert Barker.

  • Barker, T. Herbert (Thomas Herbert), 1814-1865
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of sewer emanations / by T. Herbert Barker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sufficiently distinct. Vomiting is a symptom of this poison, without purging, but occasionally with tenesmus. When the dose is very large, death occurs speedily, with quickened and laboured respiration. When the administration is kept up in small doses for many hours, the symptoms are those of excited circulation and thirst, followed by rapid sinking. The surface of the body, from being unusually hot becomes unusually cold. The tongue is protruded, dry, dark, and cold. There is con- stant jactitation of the limbs, subsultus tendinum, feeble, quick pulse, and ultimately death, which may occur even some hours after the animal has been removed from the poison and placed in the open air. The pathology after death from sulphide of ammonium dif- fers from that which follows the administration of sulphuretted hydrogen. When the exhalation is prolonged, and the death is gradual, the alimentary mucous surface is changed. The mucous coat is injected and softened in patches. The blood shows no fibrinous separations, but is dark, and either feebly coagulated, or entirely fluid. The blood-corpuscles are also much dissolved and changed, and there is congestion of fluid blood in all the vascular organs. The dose of sulphide of ammonium required for the pro- duction of serious symptoms is difficult to calculate, and this, from the fact, that when the vapour of sulphide is diffused through a confined space, in which an animal is breathing, there is quickly a deposit on the floor of the chamber of the white bicarbonate of ammonia. This deposition is so rapid, indeed, that the effect of the poison is very quickly lost, so that constant renewal is required, and the calculation of dose is necessarily rendered obscure, since the animal is not breathing the same dose for any two minutes together. Dr. Richardson, in his late valuable work on the blood, describes the symp-
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