These symptoms occasionally amount to absolute narcotism, as in some of the animals on which Sir B. Brodie experimented. Thus, when he injected a solution of the oxide into the stomach of a dog, the pulse was rendered slow and intermitting; the animal became palsied in the hind-legs, lethargic, and in no long time insensible, with dilated pupils; and soon afterwards it was seized with convulsions, amidst which it died, fifty minutes after the poison was administered.[641] In man the symptoms very seldom resembled so closely those of the narcotic poisons. In Mr. Stallard’s case, however, formerly mentioned, the symptoms of irritation which appeared at first speedily gave place to complete insensibility for two hours before death (pp. 235, 238), a similar instance has been related in Henke’s Journal. A young man who got an arsenical solution from an old woman to cure ague, was attacked after taking it with vomiting and loud cries, afterwards with incoherent talking, then fell into a deep sleep, and finally perished in convulsions in five hours.[642] In some cases of the kind now under consideration, one or two attacks of vomiting occur at the usual interval after the taking of the poison; but it seldom continues. The most uniform and remarkable affection is extreme faintness, amounting at times to deliquium. Occasionally there is some stupor, or rather oppression, and often slight convulsions. Pain in the stomach is generally present; but it is slight, and seldom accompanied with other signs of internal inflammation. Death commonly takes place in a few hours. Yet, even when it is retarded till the beginning of the second day, the faintness and stupor are sometimes more striking features in the case than the symptoms of inflammation in the stomach. This variety of poisoning has been hitherto observed only under the three following circumstances,—when the dose of poison was large,—when it was in little masses,—or when it was in a state of solution. The mode in which the first and last circumstances operate is evident; they facilitate the absorption of a large quantity of arsenic in a short space of time, so that its remote action begins before local inflammation is fully developed. But it is not easy to see how any such effect can flow from the arsenic being in little masses. It is also to be observed that none of the circumstances here mentioned is invariable in its operation. An instance is related in Rust’s Magazine, of the customary signs of irritation having been produced even by the solution.[643] On the whole, the present variety of poisoning is rather uncommon, and indeed, although the attention of the profession was pointedly called to it even in the first edition of the present work, its existence does not seem to be so generally known as it ought to be.[644] It may be right therefore to specify the cases which have been published.