A very similar case happened in Edinburgh in 1863.[105] Two young men were carrying a jar of nitric acid; the jar broke, and they attempted to wipe up the acid from the floor. The one died ten hours after the accident, the other in less than twenty-four hours. The symptoms were mainly those of difficult breathing, and it is probable that death was produced from suffocation. Dr. Taylor relates also, that having accidentally inhaled the vapour in preparing gun-cotton, he suffered from severe constriction of the throat, tightness in the chest, and cough, for more than a week.[106] [105] _Chemical News_, March 14, 1863, p. 132. [106] _Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence_, vol. i., 1873, p. 218. § 85. =Effects of Liquid Nitric Acid.=--Poisoning by nitric acid, though still rare, is naturally more frequent than formerly. At the beginning of this century, Tartra[107] wrote a most excellent monograph on the subject, and collated all the cases he could find, from the first recorded instances related by Bembo[108] in Venetian history, down to his own time. The number of deaths in those 400 years was but fifty-five, while, in our century, at least fifty can be numbered. Most of these (74 per cent.) are suicidal, a very few homicidal, the rest accidental. In one of Tartra’s cases, some nitric acid was placed in the wine of a drunken woman, with fatal effect. Osenbrüggen[109] relates the case of a father murdering his six children by means of nitric acid; and C. A. Büchner[110] that of a soldier who poured acid into the mouth of his illegitimate infant. A curious case is one in which a man poisoned his drunken wife by pouring the acid into her right ear; she died after six weeks’ illness. All these instances prove again, if necessary, that the acid is only likely to be used with murderous intent in the case of young children, or of sleeping, drunken, or otherwise helpless people. [107] Tartra, A. E., Dr., _Traité de l’Empoisonnement par l’Acide Nitrique_, Paris, An. 10 (1802), pp. 300. [108] _Bembo Cardinalis, Rerum Venetarium Historiæ_, lib. xii., lib. i. p. 12, Paris Ed., 1551. [109] _Allgem.-Deutsche Strafrechtszeitung, herausgeg. v. Frz. v. Holtzendorff_, 5 Jahrg., 1865, Hft. 5, S. 273. [110] Friederich’s _Blätter f. ger. Med._, 1866, Hft. 3, S. 187. As an example of the way in which accidents are brought about by heedlessness, may be cited the recent case of a woman who bought a small quantity of aqua fortis for the purpose of allaying toothache by a local application. She attempted to pour the acid direct from the bottle into the cavity of the tooth; the acid went down her throat, and the usual symptoms followed. She threw up a very perfect cast of the gullet (preserved in University College museum), and rapidly died. Nitric acid has been mistaken for various liquids, and has also been used by injection as an abortive, in every respect having a toxicological history similar to that of sulphuric acid.