Treatise on Poisons: In relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physicChristison, Robert, Sir
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Treatise on Poisons: In relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic
Christison, Robert, Sir
Medical jurisprudence; Toxicology
By following this method of analysis, I have found that one grain of
iodine of potassium, which is equivalent to three-quarters of a grain of
iodine, may be easily discovered in six ounces of urine,—a fluid as
complicated as can well be conceived.
The process adopted by Professor Orfila is so nearly the same with this,
as scarcely to require being detailed. He uses nitric acid instead of
chlorine for decomposing the hydriodic acid. Chlorine, however, is the
most delicate reagent for the purpose, if it be used in the way
described above.
_Action of Iodine and Symptoms in Man._—Iodide has a twofold action, one
local and irritating, the other general, and produced only when it has
been administered long in frequent small doses.
Orfila remarked that in doses of two drachms it excited in dogs symptoms
of irritation in the stomach; that death slowly ensued in seven days,
without the symptoms having ever become very violent; and that the
villous coat of the stomach was here and there yellow, had also patches
of yellow mucus lining it, and exhibited numerous little ulcers of a
yellow colour. He could not observe much injury from iodine introduced
into the cellular tissue; and more lately, Dr. Cogswell remarked that in
this way it merely induces phlegmonous inflammation and the usual
consequences.[331]
An important circumstance in regard to the physiology and medical
jurisprudence of this poison and its compounds is, that it may
undoubtedly be detected in the blood, both when a single large dose has
been taken, and in those persons who have used it for some time
medicinally. Cantu, an Italian experimentalist, discovered iodine in
such circumstances in the blood, sweat, urine, saliva and milk;[332] and
Bennerscheidt, a German chemist, also found it in the blood, when it had
been employed outwardly.[333] In the latter instance it could not be
detected in the serum, but it was detected in the crassamentum by means
of starch. Some interesting facts of the same nature have also been
ascertained by Dr. O’Shaughnessey, from which it appears that even in
acute poisoning with this substance, satisfactory proof of its
administration may be procured several days afterwards by analysing
certain secretions. In a dog poisoned with iodine, he detected the
poison in forty minutes in the urine, and occasionally in the same
secretion so late as the fifth day, when it died. It is singular,
however, that he could not find it in the same quarter on the third day,
although it existed at that time abundantly in the saliva.[334] In these
experiments the iodine was always found in the form of hydriodic acid,
having been converted into that compound in the alimentary canal. This
change takes place with such rapidity, that on one occasion, in the
vomited matter discharged by a dog fifteen minutes only after the
administration of iodine, Dr. O’Shaughnessey could find no iodine, but a
large quantity of hydriodic acid.[335] Orfila has found it not only in
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