A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology, with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, jr.

  • Horatio Curtis Wood Jr.
Date:
1874
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on therapeutics : comprising materia medica and toxicology, with especial reference to the application of the physiological action of drugs to clinical medicine / by H.C. Wood, jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    On account of its marked influence on the development of bone, Dr. Weguer suggests its use in osteo-malacia and in riclcets, but as yet there has been no clinical experience with the drug in these disorders. Prof. Samuel E. Percy has used a preparation of phosphorus (see Admin- istration) with great advantage in cases of repeated furuncular eruptions (Prize Essay, Transactions of the American Medical Association, 1872, p. 659). Toxicology.—The ingestion of a fatal dose of phosphorus is not followed by any sensible efiFects for some time. After, however, from three to twelve hours a sense of weakness and of general wretchedness manifests itself, and in a large proportion of the cases (according to Lewin eighty-eight per cent.) is accompanied, or soon followed, by vomiting. With the emesis there is nausea, and in most cases the patient complains of abdominal pain, the severity of which, however, never equals that of corrosive poisoning, The matters vomited consist of food, mucus, and bile. During the first eight or ten hours they often smell strongly of phosphorus, and are luminous in the dax-k. The vomiting may persist during the whole attack, but generally ceases on the second or third day, to reappear with the subsequent jaundice, when coflFee-colored vomit from exuded blood is ejected. The pain, which in most cases abates with the vomiting, often spreads from the epigastrium over' the whole abdomen, and in rare instances is paroxysmal. If it reappear in the latter stages, it is apt to affect especially the right liypochondrium, and is associated with decided tenderness in the region named and in the epigas- trium. The tongue is whitish or abnormally red, sometimes furred. There is generally fever, loss of appetite, and thirst. MaukopflF has noted a morning and evening temperature of from 37° C. to 39° C. and from 37.4° C. to 89.8° C. respectively. During the latter part of the case there is very often a re- markable fall in the temperature, which is generally, but not always, a pre- cursor of death. The lowest point I have seen noted was 31.2° C. (88.3° F.) some hours before death.* In some cases fever is altogether absent or comes on just before death.f The stools are at times normal in character and frequency, but there is generally diarrhoea or constipation, with flatulence. Late in the attack the passages are in most cases very light clay-colored, or even whitish, and ex- ceptionally they are bloody. In some cases they are phosphorescent. Jaundice comes on in from thirty-six hours (cases reported by MaukopflF, Wiener Medicin. WocJienschri/t, 1863, and by Tiingel, Klinisclie Mittlieilungen von der Medicin. Ahtheilung des Allgemein. Krankenhauses in Hamburg, 1861) to five days (Lebert and Wyss, Archives Gdndralcs, 6th series, xii., Sep- tember, 1868) after the ingestion of the poison. In most cases it appears first * See case of Dr. Battmann, Archiv der Heilkundc, 1871, p. 267. t See case of Conoato, Sydenham Hoc. Year Book, 1869-70, p. 454.
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