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.

    898/918 (page 860)
    CHAPTER XLIL OF COMPOUND POISONING. Having now investigated the three great classes of poisons in their relations to physiology, practice of physic, and medi- cal jurisprudence, it will be necessary for me to offer a few observations on a subject of considerable medico-legal import- ance, which has been almost entirely overlooked in systems of Toxicology,—Compound Poisoning. When two poisons of different or opposite properties are ad- ministered about the same time in poisonous doses, the effects of the one may overpower and prevent the operation of the other, or they may merely modify the action of one another. In this manner the usual symptoms produced by one or bv both may be entirely or in a great measure wanting; and even in the dead body the usual appearances occasioned by one or by both may be modified or perhaps altogether absent. Although in the course of reading I have met with a suffi- cient number of cases of the kind to shew that compound poi- soning is an object of some consequence to the medical jurist, the facts hitherto made public are not so numerous as to ren- der a systematic arrangement of them practicable. The most advisable course, therefore, seems to be merely to describe for the present the cases which have been brought under my no- tice. These are as follows. 1. Poisoning icith Arsenic and Alcohol.—A man, after taking- three gills (12 ounces) of whisky at a debauch, swallowed, an hour afterwards, while in a state of excitement, but not parti- cularly drunk, a quantity of arsenic, the dose of which could not be ascertained. Fifteen minutes after the arsenic was taken medical aid was procured, upon which repeated attempts were made to produce vomiting by means of ipecacuan and sulphate of zinc, but to no purpose. The stomach-pump was therefore resorted to; and, after at least an hour had been spent in pre- vious attempts by emetics, the stomach was cleared of a fluid in which arsenic was unequivocally detected. No symptom of poisoning with arsenic followed. As the man took the arsenic