The lead in glass, though in the form of an insoluble silicate, is said to have been dissolved by vinegar and other acid fluids to a dangerous extent. This, however, is hardly well established.[834]
[834] See Aerztl. Intelligenzbl. f. Baiern, Jahrg., 1869; Buchner’s Rep. Pharm., Bd. xix. p. 1; Med. Centrbl., Jahrg., 1869, p. 40.
§ 780. Effects of Lead Compounds on Animals.—Orfila and the older school of toxicologists made a number of experiments on the action of sugar of lead and other compounds, but they are of little value for elucidating the physiological or toxic action of lead, because they were, for the most part, made under unnatural conditions, the gullet being ligatured to avoid expulsion of the salt by vomiting. Harnack, in order to avoid the local and corrosive effects of sugar of lead, used an organic compound, viz., plumbic triethyl acetate, which has no local action. Frogs exhibited symptoms after subcutaneous doses of from 2 to 3 mgrms., rabbits after 40 mgrms.; there was increased peristaltic action of the intestines, with spasmodic contraction rising to colic, very often diarrhœa, and death followed through heart paralysis. Dogs given the ethyl compound exhibited nervous symptoms like chorea. Gusserno[835] has also made experiments on animals as to the effects of lead, using lead phosphate, and giving from 1·2 grm. to a rabbit and a dog daily. Rosenstein[836] and Heubel[837] used small doses of acetate, the latter giving dogs daily from ·2 to ·5 grm. The results arrived at by Gusserno were, mainly, that the animals became emaciated, shivered, and had some paralysis of the hinder extremities; while Rosenstein observed towards the end epileptiform convulsions, and Heubel alone saw, in a few of his cases, colic. A considerable number of cattle have been poisoned from time to time with lead, and one instance of this fell under my own observation. A pasture had been manured with refuse from a plumber’s yard, and pieces of paint were in this way strewn about the field in every direction; a herd of fifteen young cattle were placed in the field, and in two or three days they all, without exception, began rapidly to lose condition, and to show peculiar symptoms—diarrhœa, loss of appetite; in two, blindness, the retina presenting an appearance not unlike that seen in Bright’s disease; in three, a sort of delirium. Four died, and showed on post-mortem examination granular conditions of the kidneys, which was the most striking change observable. In the fatal cases, paralysis of the hind extremities, coma, and convulsions preceded death. In another case[838] seven cows and a bull died from eating lead paint; the symptoms were loss of appetite, obstinate constipation, suspension of rumination, dry muffle, quick breathing, and coma. In other cases a marked symptom has been paralysis. Cattle[839] have also several times been poisoned from eating grass which has been splashed by the spray from bullets, as in pastures in the vicinity of rifle butts; here we must allow that the intestinal juices have dissolved the metal, and transformed it into compounds capable of being taken into the system.
[835] Virchow’s Archiv. f. path. Anat., vol. xxi. p. 443.
[836] Ib., vol. xxxix. pp. 1 and 74.
[837] Pathogenese u. Symptome der chronischen Bleivergiftung, Berlin, 1871.