Observations on the medical evidence in the case of the Queen v. Smethurst / by T.G. Geoghegan.

  • Geoghegan, Thomas Grace, 1807-1869.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the medical evidence in the case of the Queen v. Smethurst / by T.G. Geoghegan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Medical Press Ox''September 14, 1859, that very large doses of antimony, as employed in the treatment of pulmonary dis- orders are not poisonous, it may suffice to observe, that no safe analogy can hence be drawn as to its influence on the healthy body. This latter, however, is precisely the ques- tion involved in medico-legal practice. With just as much reason might opium be pronounced innocuous, because a patient suflFering from delirium tremens can take doses which would kill a man in health. Even ia those cases of disease in which a tolerance of tartar emetic has been generally accredited, serious, or even fatal eflFects occasionally follow. An observer of Rasori's practice in pneumonia states that the mortality was more than fifty per cent., and was, in his opinion, due more to the remedy than to the disease. Dr. Boling,* speaking of doses much inferior to the Rasorian, bears testimony to their danger. I have myself seen symptoms of poisoning from medicinal doses of very ordinary amount. Such cases might be multiplied if necessary. Indeed, it seems not unlikely that the pretty general abandonment of tartar emetic in the disease has arisen as much from the hazard of this mode of treatment, as from a change in the type of the disorder. The experiments of Wetzler, Jankowich, and Mayerhofer, performed several years ago upon their own persons, are decisive as to the poisonous action of tartar emetic upon the healthy body in repeated doses not exceeding one grain and a half, and in several instances much less.t It was found ♦ Dublin Medical Press, November 19th, 1851. In a case of pneu- monia, Dr. Haldane {Edinburgh Med. Jour. 1854,) has seen between forty and fifty grains, distributed over several days, prove fatal, with marked symptoms of antimonial poisoning. t Heller's Archiv. 1846, page 100, and Kleinert's AUgemeines Repertorium, i Heft., page 61. The experiments of the latter ob- server are contained in his prize essay, in answer to questions proposed by the University of Munich in 1841, and which embraced most of the