A treatise on poisons, in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic / By Robert Christison.

  • Christison, Robert, Sir, 1797-1882.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on poisons, in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic / By Robert Christison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    852/918 (page 814)
    the human subject,—generally in consequence of its having' been taken in various parts of the Continent with senna, which it is employed to adulterate. Sauvages has recorded two cases of death occasioned by the berries. In one, a child, death took place within a day under symptoms like epileptic convulsions; and in the other, an adult, who swallowed only fifteen berries, convulsions, coma, and lividity of the face were produced, end- ing fatally the same evening, though the greater part of the berries were discharged by emetics*. In recent French jour- nals various similar cases are recorded. M. Fee describes five cases, one of them fatal. In this instance, a male adult, death occurred within four hours after he took an infusion of senna adulterated with the coriaria; and the symptoms were violent convulsions, locked-jaw and colic -j-. M. Roux has noticed a great number of cases in the fullest paper yet published on its effects on man, and gives the details of three which came under his own notice, and of which one proved fatal. In the fatal case, that of a child three years and a-haif old, who took between eighty and a hundred berries, the symptoms were heat and prick- ing of the tongue, sparkling and rolling of the eyes, loss of voice, locked-jaw, and convulsions recurring in occasional fits of eight or ten minutes in duration. Death ensued in sixteen hours and a-half \. Roux refers also among other instances to those of no fewer than ten soldiers, who were attacked at the same time in consequence of eating the berries, and of whom two died. In Roux's fatal case there was injection of the membranes of the brain, and no other particular appearance ; in that mentioned by Fee, there was inflammation of the stomach and bowels ; and in one of Sauvages's cases no morbid appearance at all was dis- covered. Considering these very pointed proofs of the poisonous qua- lities of the Coriaria, it is not a little singular that doubts have lately arisen whether it is a poison at all. PescJiier of Geneva says he has ascertained that tanners, who use it in their trade on account of the powerful astringency of the leaves, also take it internally for gleet, and that he gave a decoction of an ounce to chickens, dogs, and men, without witnessing any ill effect §. * Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences. 1739, p. 47. + Journal de Chim. Med. iv. 528. t London Medical and Physical Journal, April 1829. § Memoires de la Soc. de Phys. et d'Hist. Nat, de Geneve, v. 194.