Account of two cases of death from eating mussels : with some general observations on fish-poison / by George Man Burrows.
- George Man Burrows
- Date:
- 1815
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Account of two cases of death from eating mussels : with some general observations on fish-poison / by George Man Burrows. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![rosed its exhibition, asserts that either in substance or solution, as an antidote, it has never failed of success*. Now Dr. C. informs usf that his friend Mr. W. Steven¬ son, late of St. Kitfs, always administered the fresh juice of tlie sugar-cane as an antidote to fish-poison in the West Indies, with the happiest effects; and that when this could not be pro¬ cured by the common people, they drank the expressed juice of the sweet potatoe (convolvulus battalas) with the same success. It is also evident, that there is a very striking resem¬ blance of the symptoms from copper and those from fish-poison on the human frame. M. Orfila has given a summary of the symptoms attendant on the operation of cupreous poison];: they have been also ac¬ curately described by many other writers, with whose descrip¬ tion his corresponds; and it is impossible not to admit the affinity of the effects of fish-poison and copper. But yet there is, in all the histories I have read of poison from copper, the absence of the characteristic diagnostic of poison from fish— the violent cutaneous irritation and peculiar eruption, or nettle- rash,—a symptom, which, although attending poisoning by many other substances §, is not an effect of copper, yet it ap¬ pears uniformly from fish-poison. This circumstance sufficiently & Vide London Medical Repository, vol. ii. p. 499. f Vide Edinburgh Journal, vol. v. p. 415. 4 “ The taste, acrid, styptic, coppery; the tongue, dry and parched; a sense of strangulation in the throat; coppery eructations; continual spitting; nausea; severe vomiting; or fruitless efforts to vomit, a sensation of pul¬ ling of the stomach, which is often very painful; dreadful colic; very fre¬ quent, sometimes bloody and black, stools; with tenesmus ; debility; the abdomen inflated and painful; the pulse small, irregular, hard, and quick ; syncope; the heat natural, and thirst ardent; respiration difficult; prsecor- dial anxiety; cold sweats; scanty urineviolent cephalalgia; vertigo ; pros¬ tration of strength in the joints; cramps; convulsions ; and death/’—VidS Traite des Poisons, &;c. p. 273. # § The rash, mentioned by Dr. Percival, attending on the young lady poisoned by the eating of pickles impregnated with copper, was that only which is often observed arising from acrid and indigestible substances takert into the stomach.-—Vide Percival’s Works, vol. iv. p. 221.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30795679_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
