A woman, under the influence of great and sudden grief—not unmixed with passion—drew a bottle from her pocket, and emptied it very quickly. She immediately uttered a cry, writhed, and vomited a yellow-green fluid. The abdomen also became enlarged. Milk was given her, but she could not swallow it, and death took place, in convulsions, two hours after the drinking of the poison.
The post-mortem appearances were briefly as follows:—Mouth and tongue free from textural change: much gas in the abdomen, more especially in the stomach; the membranes of the brain congested; the lungs filled with blood. The stomach was strongly pressed forward, of a dark brown-red, and exhibited many irregular blackish spots, varying from two lines to half an inch in diameter (the spots were drier and harder than the rest of the stomach); the mucous membrane, internally, was generally blackened, and changed to a carbonised, shaggy, slimy mass, while the organ was filled with a blackish homogeneous pulp, which had no odour. The gullet was also blackened. A considerable quantity of hydrochloric acid was separated from the stomach.[95]
[95] Preuss. Med. Vereinszeit. u. Friederichs Blätter f. gerichtl. Anthropologie, 1858, Hft. 6, S. 70.
The termination in this instance was unusually rapid. In a case detailed by Casper,[96] in which a boy drank an unknown quantity of acid, death took place in seven hours. In Guy’s Hospital museum, the duodenum and stomach are preserved of a patient who is said to have died in nine and a half hours from half an ounce of the acid. The same quantity, in a case related by Taylor, caused death in eighteen hours. From these and other instances, it may be presumed that death from acute poisoning by hydrochloric acid will probably take place within twenty-four hours. From the secondary effects, of course, death may take place at a remote period, e.g., in a case recorded by Dr. Duncan (Lancet, April 12, 1890), a man drank about 1 oz. of HCl accidentally, was admitted to Charing Cross Hospital the same day, and treated with small quantities of sodium carbonate, and fed by the rectum. On the eighth day he brought up 34 oz. of blood; in a month he left apparently perfectly well, but was admitted again in about six weeks, and died of contraction of the stomach and stricture of the pylorus on the ninety-fourth day.
[96] Case 230.—Gerichtliche Medicin, 6th Ed., Berlin, 1876.