Toadstool poisoning differs from most poisonings in the long time elapsing before death in fatal cases. The only inorganic poisons causing death after such a long interval produce profound tissue changes. Husemann believed death from poisonous mushrooms to be due to fatty degeneration of the various organs. We have examined microscopically the tissue of dogs and cats dying from the late effects of the A. muscaria and A. phalloides and found them to be perfectly normal.
Mr. V.K. Chestnut, in a bulletin published by the United States Department of Agriculture (Circular No. 13, p. 23), states that death from the A. phalloides is due to a destruction of the red-blood corpuscles. Upon what authority this assertion is made is not stated. The conclusion has probably been based upon the venosity of the blood in cases of poisoning resulting from the disturbance of the respiration and circulation. The blood corpuscles of animals poisoned by all three of the Amanitæ studied have been counted repeatedly in our experiments and in none of them has there been any appreciable reduction.
It can be positively stated that death is not due to a destruction of the red blood cells.
Further, the coloring matter of the blood (hæmoglobin), which carries oxygen to the tissues, has been examined with the spectroscope to see if any new compound had been formed which would prevent it from carrying oxygen. No such compound has been found—no alteration could be detected in the hæmoglobin. It is quite evident that these toadstools do not kill by their action on the blood, for in a number of experiments the blood was examined a very short time before death.
Thinking that they might act upon the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord very much as certain toxins of infectious diseases do, those structures were examined by special staining methods (silver impregnation), but no greater variation than is normal could be detected in any of those examined.
No statement can be made as to the cause of this late death, but it would appear to be due to some disturbance of nutrition.
Late death occurs not only in animals, but in most of the cases of poisoning in man recorded in medical literature.
The contrast between the early and late symptoms is not so great in poisoning by A. phalloides and A. verna as in the case of poisoning by A. muscaria. In the first two the serious symptoms appear early and continue till the end; in the last the early effects of the muscarine soon passes off or can be removed by atropine, but the late symptoms, strikingly in contrast with the early ones, still appear, and continue till death.
