[620] G. Schmidt, Arch. Pharm. [3] 13, 213-229. Schlippe, Liebig’s Annalen, 105, 1. Geuther and Fröhlich, Zeitschrift f. Chem., 1870, 26 and 549; Journ. Chem. Society, March 1879, p. 221.
[621] Benedikt has found 0·55 per cent. of unsaponifiable matter in croton oil. Lewkowitsch gives the iodine value 101·7 to 104·7, and solidifying point as 18·6°-19·0°. (Cheml. Analysis of the Oils, Fats, and Waxes, by R. Benedikt, translated and enlarged by J. Lewkowitsch, London, 1895.)
§ 611. Dose.—The oil is given medicinally as a powerful purgative in doses up to 65 mgrms. (about a grain). It is used externally as an irritant or vesicant to the skin. A very dangerous dose would be from fifteen to twenty times the medicinal dose.
Effects.—Numerous cases of poisoning from large doses of croton oil are recorded in medical literature, but the sufferers have mostly recovered. The symptoms are pain, and excessive purging and vomiting.
In the case of a chemist,[622] who took half an ounce of impure croton oil instead of cod-liver oil, the purging was very violent, and he had more than a hundred stools in a few hours; there was a burning pain in the gullet and stomach, the skin was cyanosed, the pupils dilated, and great faintness and weakness were felt, yet the man recovered. A child, aged four, recovered from a teaspoonful of the oil given by mistake directly after a full meal of bread and milk. In five minutes there were vomiting and violent purging, but the child was well in two days. A death occurred in Paris, in 1839, in four hours after taking two and a half drachms of the oil. The symptoms of the sufferer, a man, were those just detailed, namely, burning pain in the stomach, vomiting, and purging. Singularly enough, no marked change was noticed in the mucous membrane of the stomach when examined after death. An aged woman died in 3 days from a teaspoonful of croton-oil embrocation; in this case there were convulsions.
[622] Revue de Thérapeut., May 1881.