An account of two cases of death from eating mussels : with some general observations on fish-poison / by George Man Burrows.

  • Burrows, George Man, 1771-1846.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of two cases of death from eating mussels : with some general observations on fish-poison / by George Man Burrows. 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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    II. Is copper, if accessible to, and becoming a part of their food, inimical to fish ? III. Are the symptoms, characteristic of the operation of fish-poison, ever produced by animals or substances, of which copper is not known or suspected to be a component ])art ? I. Dr. Chisholm conceives that copper may be held in solu- tion by the water of the tropical seas; and thus become a part of the food of fish. Granting that he is correct in his geological description of Antigua, the contiguous islands, and of the straits that insulate them; and that copper abounds among them—is that a feasible reason for supposing that copper is actually held in solution in the water of those seas Sea-water, in a great variety of places and latitudes, has been chemically examined, for the purpose of ascertaining its constituents; and although these may sometimes have varied in their proportions, yet no trace of copper or any other metal has, I believe, ever been detected. Modern research has no where discovered, that the sea that laves the shore of a country abounding in mineral productions partakes of the qualities of such minerals. To support his theory, that copper may be held in solu- tion in the sea-water, round the islands of Antigua, &c. Dr. Chisholm says, that if heat is a necessary condition in the solution of copper by the muriatic acid, (the basis, he observes, of sea-water,) we can the more readily perceive the cause of the natural solution of this metal in the West- Indian or tropical seas and concludes, that the tempe- rature of the sea-water is there much greater than in cold or temperate climates : arising—1. from the innumerable subma- rine volcanoes and pyritous beds ;—2. from the insupportable heat of the sand in many places;—3. from the proportion of the oxygen in the atmosphere of the torrid zone being so much greater than in other regions;—and hence there is a probability *' of the oxygenation of the muriatic acid being a frequent natural chemical combination*.' • Vide Edin. Med, and Surg. Journal, vol. iv. p. 401.