§ 483. The symptoms appear soon after the ingestion, and consist of a feeling of burning in the mouth, spreading downwards to the stomach, increased secretion of saliva, and difficulty of swallowing; then follow violent vomiting and diarrhœa, with great pain in the bowels, often tenesmus; there is also headache, giddiness, a feeling of anxiety, and the pupils are dilated. The consciousness is ordinarily intact; the pulse is weak and slow, and the breathing embarrassed; the skin is benumbed. There may be also formicating feelings, and twitchings in the muscles with occasionally the tetanic cramps, which are constantly seen in frogs. In cases which end fatally, the disturbance of the breathing and circulation increases, and death takes place in collapse.
An important case of slow poisoning is on record,[534] in which two brothers, aged twenty-one and twenty-two years, died after nine and eleven weeks of illness, evidently from repeated small doses of the powder of Veratrum album. They became very weak and thin, suffered from diarrhœa and bloody stools, sleeplessness, disturbance of the intellect, and delirium.
[534] Nivet and Géraud, Gaz. Hebdom., 1861.
§ 484. The post-mortem signs do not appear distinctive; even in the case just mentioned—in which one would expect to find, at all events, an extensive catarrh of the intestinal canal—the results seem to have been negative.
§ 485. Separation from Organic Matters.—The method of Stas (by which the organic matters, whether the contents of the stomach or the tissues, are treated with alcohol, weakly acidified by tartaric acid) is to be recommended. After filtering, the alcoholic extract may be freed from alcohol by careful distillation, and the extract taken up with water. By now acidifying gently the watery extract, and shaking it up with ether and chloroform, fatty matters, resinous substances, and other impurities, are removed, and it may then be alkalised by soda or potash, and the veratrine extracted by ether. The residue should be identified by the hydrochloric acid and by the sulphuric acid and bromine reactions; care should also be taken to ascertain whether it excites sneezing.
A ptomaine, discovered by Brouardel,[535] was described by him as both chemically and physiologically analogous to veratrine. A. M. Deleziniere[536] has since investigated this substance. Only when in contact with air does the analogy to veratrine obtain, and Deleziniere, to ascertain its reactions, studied it when in an atmosphere of nitrogen. It appears to be a secondary monamine, C32H31N, and is in the form of a colourless, oily liquid, with an odour like that of the hawthorn. It is insoluble in water, but alcohol, ether, toluene, and benzene dissolve it readily. It oxidises in the presence of air. The salts are deliquescent.