Dr. Jacobi[129] gives the following cases.
[129] Amer. Med. Times, 1860.
Dr. Fountain in 1858, experimenting on himself, took 29·2 grms. (8·7 drms.) of potassic chlorate; he died on the seventh day from nephritis. A young lady swallowed 30 grms. (8·5 drms.), when using it as a gargle; she died in a few days from nephritis. A man, thirty years of age, died in four days after having taken 48 grms. (12·3 drms.) of sodic chlorate in six hours. The shortest time in which I can find the salt to have been fatal, is a case related by Dr. Manouvriez, in which a woman took 45 grms., and died in five hours. The smallest dose which has proved fatal is one in which an infant three years old was killed by 3 grms. (46·3 grains).
Jacobi considers that the maximum dose to be given in divided doses during the twenty-four hours, to infants under three, should be from 1-1·5 grm. (15·4-23·1 grains), to children from three years old, up to 2 grms. (30·8 grains); and adults from 6-8 grms. (92·6-123·4 grains).
§ 133. Elimination.—Potassic chlorate is quickly absorbed by mucous membranes, and by the inflamed skin, and rapidly separated from the body by the action of the kidneys. Wöhler, as early as 1824, recognised that it in great part passed out of the body unchanged, and, lately, Isambert, in conjunction with Hirne,[130] making quantitative estimations, recovered from the urine no less than 95 per cent. of the ingested salts. Otto Hehner has also made several auto-experiments, and taking 21⁄2 drms., found that it could be detected in the urine an hour and a half afterwards. At that time 17·23 per cent. of the salt had been excreted, and, by the end of eleven hours, 93·8 per cent. was recovered. It is then difficult to believe that the salt gives any oxygen to the tissues, for though it is true that in all the investigations a small percentage remains to be accounted for, and also that Binz,[131] making experiments by mixing solutions of potassic chlorate with moist organic substances, such as pus, yeast, fibrin, &c., has declared that, at a blood heat the chlorate is rapidly reduced, and is no longer recognisable as chlorate—yet it may be affirmed that potassic chlorate is recovered from the urine as completely as anything which is ever excreted by the body, and that deductions drawn from the changes undergone by the salt in solutions of fibrin, &c., have only an indirect bearing on the question.
[130] Gaz. Méd. de Paris, 1875, Nro. 17, 35, 41, 43.
[131] Berlin klin. Wochenschr., xi. 10, S. 119, 1874.