The preceding remarks contain all that is known with certainty of the effect of arsenic on man when it is swallowed. Independently of the obvious nervous disorders which succeed the acute symptoms, other morbid affections of a more obscure character and chronic in their nature have been sometimes observed or supposed to arise from this poison.—Among these the most unequivocal is dyspepsia. Irritability of the stomach, attended with constant vomiting of food, has been occasionally noticed for a long time after. Wepfer has described two cases in which the primary symptoms were followed, in one by dyspepsia of three years’ standing, in the other by emaciation and an anomalous fever, which ended fatally in three years.[671]—Hahnemann farther adds, that in the advanced stage the hair sometimes drops out, and the cuticle desquamates, accompanied occasionally with great tenderness of the skin;[672] and Wibmer mentions a case of the kind, where not the cuticle and hair only, but likewise even the nails, fell off.[673] Desquamation of the cuticle and dropping of the nails are at times produced by the continued use of arsenic in medicinal doses.—Other effects have likewise been ascribed to its employment medicinally. Thus passing over what was stated by its opponents at the time when its introduction into the materia medica was made the subject of controversy over Europe, Broussais maintained that it causes chronic inflammation of the stomach or intestines;[674] and Dr. Astbury inferred, from an instance which fell under his notice, that it may bring on dropsy.[675] Neither of these ideas is supported by the general experience of the profession; and although some persons even of late have alleged that those, who take it medicinally to any material amount, invariably die soon after of some chronic disease,[676] there cannot be a doubt, that, under proper restriction, it is both an effectual and a safe remedy.—A case where salivation, with fetor and superficial ulceration of the gums, seemed to have been produced by arsenic, was lately published in an English Journal.[677] In the present place may also be considered the supposed effects of the celebrated _Aqua Toffana_ or _Acquetta di Napoli_, a slow poison, which in the sixteenth century, was believed to possess the property of causing death at any determinate period, after months for example, or even years, of ill health, according to the will of the poisoner.