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
A variety of circumstances of a
general nature, which it would be out of place to enumerate here,—the
detection of arsenic in various articles of which the woman had
partaken, and in which the arsenic had been dissolved sometimes simply,
sometimes with the aid of an alkali,—together with the fact, that the
body five months after death was found preserved from decay, as it is
now well known to be in most cases of arsenical poisoning,—left little
doubt that the woman died of the effects of arsenic taken in several
small doses at distant intervals, although none could be detected in the
stomach or intestines. The case did not go to trial, owing to the death
of an essential witness.
The effects of arsenic on man, when introduced into the living body
through other channels besides the stomach, will now require some
observations. It is necessary for the medical jurist to be well
acquainted with them, because there is hardly an accessible part of the
human body to which this poison has not been applied either accidentally
or by design. When some account was given of its comparative action on
the different tissues of animals, it was observed that arsenic acts when
applied to a wound or ulcer, to the peritonæal membrane, to the eye, and
to the vagina. On man it has been known to act through an ulcer or
wound, the inner membrane of the rectum, the membrane of the vagina, the
membrane of the air-tubes, the membrane of the nose, and even the sound
skin.
Many persons have been poisoned by the application of arsenic to
surfaces deprived of the cuticle, such as blistered surfaces, eruptions,
ulcers, or wounds. When applied in this manner it commonly induces both
local inflammation and constitutional symptoms. Amatus Lusitanus relates
the case of a young man, who, against the advice of his physician,
anointed an itchy eruption of the skin with an arsenical ointment, and
next day was found dead in bed.[682] A similar case, not so rapidly
fatal, has been recorded by Wepfer. A girl, affected with psoriasis of
the scalp, had it rubbed with a liniment of butter and arsenic. In a
short time she was seized with acute pain and swelling of the whole
head, fainting-fits, restlessness, fever, delirium, and she died in six
days.[683] Zitmann has noticed the cases of two children, eight and ten
years of age, who were killed by the application of an arsenical
solution to a similar eruption of the head.[684] And Belloc relates the
case of a woman who, trying to cure an inveterate itch with an arsenical
lotion, was attacked in consequence with severe erysipelas of the whole
body, succeeded by tremors and gradual exhaustion of the vital powers,
ending fatally in two years.[685] M. Errard of Injurieux in France
lately met with two cases, where, in consequence of a freshly blistered
surface being dressed with a cerate made with the stearine of
arsenicated candles (see p. 256), local pain, nausea, pain in the
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