Volume 1

Wood's household practice of medicine hygiene and surgery : a practical treatise for the use of families, travellers, seamen, miners, and others / edited by Frederick A. Castle.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wood's household practice of medicine hygiene and surgery : a practical treatise for the use of families, travellers, seamen, miners, and others / edited by Frederick A. Castle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    panies it. It is not comfortable to contemplate the distribution of so large a quantity of indestructible poison in the soil whence our food is derived. Fortunately, plants can be relied upon, as a rule, not to take from the soil any metals which can poison animals. And in this case very careful analysis of good chemists have failed to detect arsenic in plants growing in arsenical soil. Then comes the question of poisoning water supplies. Being practically insol- uble in water, may not rains and currents collect and deposit the poison where it may do great harm ? Fortunately, again, the soil can be depended on to fix and hold it, in the attenuated propor- tions of its distribution, and not to give it up again. The truth of this statement seems clearly established by experiments done by Prof. Kedzie of the Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan Board of Health Report, 1S75, p. 13). Other authorities, also, decide that arsenic is held in the soil, being fixed by the iron oxide, as in the use of the hydrated oxide of iron as an antidote to hold arsenic insoluble in the stomach. [For composition and dangerous prop- erties of paris-green, see Poisoning by Colored Fabrics, in this Article.] White Hellebore, Veraf ntm aUmm, the root of a European plant, is used to destroy insects preying upon useful plants, including those bearing small fruits. It contains the poisonous alkaloid, veratria. It is administered medicinally in doses from two to twenty grains ; larger doses cause vomiting, purging, and pros- tration. No instances are known to the writer of injury from eating fruit sprinkled with it as an insecticide ; nevertheless some care should be exercised in its use upon fruit bushes. 10. Poisoning by Phosphorus Matches. Numerous cases of fatal poisoning of infants by sucking matches are recorded. Other cases occur of serious and fatal re- sults, from the dropping of matches into cooking utensils and food. Symptoms.—In acute phosphorus poisoning the symptoms do not transpire immediately, but after one or two hours, or even after a day or two, a burning pain in the stomach is gradually de- veloped; there may be belching up of gas, which is phosphorescent in the dark and of garlic odor ; sometimes vomiting and purging ; with weak pulse, low temperature, great thirst, and dilated pupils, the intellect remaining clear. After apparent convalescence for several days, sudden and fatal relapse is common. The death of a child has occurred from sucking two matches. Treatment.—There is no chemical antidote. Evacuate the