§ 248. Effects of Dinitro-benzol.—Huber[227] finds that if dinitro-benzol is given to frogs by the mouth in doses of from 100 to 200 mgrms., death takes place in a few hours. Doses of from 2·5 to 5 mgrms. cause general dulness and ultimately complete paralysis, and death in from one to six days.
[227] “Beiträge zur Giftwirkung des Dinitrobenzols,” A. Huber, Virchow’s Archiv, 1891, Bd. 126, S. 240.
Rabbits are killed by doses of 400 mgrms., in time varying from twenty-two hours to four days.
In a single experiment on a small dog, the weight of which was 5525 grms., the dog died in six hours after a dose of 600 mgrms.
It is therefore probable that a dose of 100 mgrms. per kilo would kill most warm-blooded animals.
A transient exposure to dinitro-benzol vapours in man causes serious symptoms; for instance, in one of Huber’s cases, a student of chemistry had been engaged for one hour and a half only in preparing dinitro-benzol, and soon afterwards his comrades remarked that his face was of a deep blue colour. On admission to hospital, on the evening of the same day, he complained of slight headache and sleeplessness; both cheeks, the lips, the muscles of the ear, the mucous membrane of the lips and cheeks, and even the tongue, were all of a more or less intense blue-grey colour. The pulse was dicrotic, 124; T. 37·2°. The next morning the pulse was slower, and by the third day the patient had recovered.
Excellent accounts of the effects of dinitro-benzol in roburite factories have been published by Dr. Ross[228] and Professor White,[229] of Wigan. Mr. Simeon Snell[230] has also published some most interesting cases of illness, cases which have been as completely investigated as possible. As an example of the symptoms produced, one of Mr. Snell’s cases may be here quoted.