§ 604. The Water Hemlock.[618]—This, a poisonous umbelliferous plant, indigenous to England, and growing in moist places such as ditches, &c., is in flower in the month of August. It resembles somewhat celery, and the root is something like the parsnip, for which it has been eaten. All parts of the plant are said to be poisonous, but the leaves and stalks only slightly so, while the root is very deadly. We unfortunately know nothing whatever about the active principles of the plant, its chemistry has yet to be worked out. M. Toulmouche (Gaz. Méd., 1846) has recorded, as the expert employed in the case, an attempt to murder by using the œnanthe as a poison; a woman scraped the root into her husband’s soup with evil intent, but the taste was unpleasant, and led to the detection of the crime. The root has been mistaken several times for parsnip and other edible roots, and has thus led to poisonings. The case of 36 soldiers poisoned in this way, in 1758, has been recorded by Orfila; there was one death. In 1803 three soldiers were poisoned at Brest—1 died. In Woolwich Bossey witnessed the poisoning of 21 convicts who ate the roots and leaves of the plant—6 died. In 1858 there were several sailors poisoned in a similar way—2 died; while there have been numerous cases in which the plant has been partaken of by children.
[618] The earliest treatise on poisoning by the water-hemlock is by Wepfer. Cicutæ Aquat. Historia et Noxæ, 1679; for cases see Trojanowsky, Dorp. med. Ztg., 1875; Meyer, Med. Zeitg. f. Preussen, 1842; Schlesier in Casper’s Wochenschrift, 1843; Maly, Œster. med Wochenschr., 1844; Badgeley, Montreal med. Gaz., 1844; Lender, Viertelj. f. ger. Med., 1865; Gampf, Cöln. Pharm. Zeitg., 1875; and the treatises of Taylor and others.
§ 605. The effects of the poison may be gathered from a case of poisoning[619] which occurred in 1882 at Plymouth; a Greek sailor, aged thirty, found on the coast what he considered “wild celery,” and ate part of the root and some of the stem. Two hours after this he ate a good meal and felt perfectly well, but fifteen minutes later he suddenly and violently vomited; the whole contents of the stomach were completely evacuated. In five minutes he was completely unconscious, and had muscular twitchings about the limbs and face. There was a copious flow of a thick tenacious mucus from the mouth which hung about the lips and clothing in viscid strings. Twenty-four hours after the poisoning he was admitted into the South Devon Hospital apparently semi-comatose; his legs dragged, and he had only feeble control of them; the extremities were cold, but there was general free sweating. He could be roused only with difficulty. There were no spasms, the pupils were dilated and sluggish, the respiration only 14 per minute. Twelve hours after admission he became warmer, and perspired freely; he slept continuously, but could easily be roused. On the following day he was quite conscious, and made a good recovery. Two companions who had also eaten a smaller quantity of the hemlock dropwort, escaped with some numbing sensations, and imperfect control over the extremities. In the Woolwich cases the symptoms seem to have been something similar; in about twenty minutes, one man, without any apparent warning, fell down in strong convulsions, which soon ceased, although he looked wild; a little while afterwards his face became bloated and livid, his breathing stertorous and convulsive, and he died in five minutes after the first symptoms had set in. A second died with similar symptoms in a quarter of an hour; a third died in about an hour, a fourth in a little more than an hour; two other cases also proved fatal, one in nine days, the other in eleven. In the two last cases there were signs of intestinal irritation. The majority of the others fell down in a state of insensibility with convulsions, the after-symptoms being more or less irritation of the intestinal canal.
[619] Lancet, Dec. 18, 1882.
§ 606. Post-mortem Appearances.—It was noticed in the Woolwich cases that those who died quickly had congestion of the cerebral vessels, and, in one instance, there was even extravasation of blood, but the man who died first of all had no congestion of the cerebral vessels. The lining membrane of the wind-pipe and air tubes was intensely injected with blood, and the lungs were gorged with fluid blood; the blood in the heart was black and fluid. The stomach and intestines were externally of a pink colour. The mucous membrane of the stomach was much corrugated, and the follicles particularly enlarged. In the two protracted cases the stomach was not reddened internally, but the vessels of the brain were congested.