Treatise on Poisons: In relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physicChristison, Robert, Sir
Science
Treatise on Poisons: In relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic
Christison, Robert, Sir
Medical jurisprudence; Toxicology
the urine, but likewise in the liver of animals.[336]
Considerable uncertainty prevails as to the circumstances in which we
may expect iodine to be detected in the organs or secretions of persons
who have taken it. Thus it has been stated by an Italian physician, Dr.
Cristin, that in many individuals affected with dropsy, struma,
epilepsy, and other diseases, he had sought for iodine to no purpose in
the urine, bronchial mucus, and other excretory fluids.[337]
With regard to its operation on man, Orfila says, he has tried the
effects of four or six grains on himself, and that he found this dose
produce a sense of constriction in the throat, sickness, pain in the
stomach, and at length vomiting and colic. There is no doubt, therefore,
that in larger doses it will prove a dangerous irritant to man as well
as to dogs. Accordingly, Dr. Gairdner has noticed the case of a child
four years old, who died in a few hours after taking about a scruple in
the form of tincture;[338] but he has not mentioned the symptoms. Dr.
Jahn of Meiningen mentions a case where an over-dose produced violent
pain in the belly, vomiting, profuse bloody diarrhœa, coldness and
blanching of the skin, rigors, quivering of the sight and rapid
pulse.[339] Two similar cases are related in a recent French journal; in
one, which was produced by a drachm and a half of the ioduretted
solution of hydriodate of potass, nausea, with acute pain and sense of
burning in the pit of the stomach, followed immediately; in an hour
there was vomiting of a yellowish matter which had the taste of iodine;
excessive restlessness ensued, with headache, giddiness and paleness of
the countenance; and these symptoms were not entirely dissipated for
five days.[340] In the other case two drachms and a half of iodine were
swallowed for the purpose of self-destruction. A sense of dryness and
burning from the throat down to the stomach was immediately produced;
lacerating pain in the stomach and fruitless efforts to vomit succeeded;
and in an hour, when the relater of the case first saw the patient,
there was suffusion of the eyes, excessive pain and tenderness of the
epigastrium, and sinking of the pulse. Vomiting, however, was then
brought on by warm water; copious yellow discharges, possessing the
smell and taste of iodine, took place; and in nine hours the patient was
well.[341]
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