| Arsenic, | 331 |
| Phosphorus, | 301 |
| Preparations of Copper, | 183 |
| The Mineral Acids, | 54 |
| Cantharides, | 35 |
| Strychnine, | 14 |
| Opiates, | 12 |
| Mercurial preparations, | 9 |
| Antimonial preparations, | 6 |
| Cyanides (that is, Prussic Acid and Potassic Cyanide), | 5 |
| Preparations of Iron, | 5 |
This list accounts for 955 poisonings, and the remaining 45 will be distributed among the less used drugs and chemicals.
IV.—The Connection between Toxic Action and Chemical Composition.
§ 23. Considerable advance has been made of late years in the study of the connection which exists between the chemical structure of the molecule of organic substances and physiological effect. The results obtained, though important, are as yet too fragmentary to justify any great generalisation; the problem is a complicated one, and as Lauder Brunton justly observes:—
“The physiological action of a drug does not depend entirely on its chemical composition nor yet on its chemical structure, so far as that can be indicated even by graphic formula, but upon conditions of solubility, instability, and molecular relations, which we may hope to discover in the future, but with which we are as yet imperfectly acquainted.”[32]
[32] Introduction to Modern Therapeutics, Lond., 1892. 136.