“An Examination of several means by which the Poison of Lead may be supposed frequently to gain admittance into the human body, unobserved, and unsuspected,” p. 257.
“An attempt towards an historical account of that species of Spasmodic Colic, distinguished by the name of the Colic of Poitou,” p. 139.
[355]. See a work by Dr. William Musgrave, which contains the earliest account of the Devonshire colic, entitled “Dissertatio de Arthritide symptomatica,” 1703; and also Dr. Huxham’s work on the “Morbus Colicus Damnoniorum.”
[356]. Annales de Chimie, vol. 1, p. 76.
[357]. See Fourcroy, Memoire sur la nature du Vin lithargyré, in the “Histoire de l’Academie Royale,” for 1817.
[358]. Sir George Baker considered that the dry belly ache, which is common to the drinkers of new rum, in the West Indies, ought to be wholly referred to its contamination with lead.
[359]. The art of glazing earthenware with lead is of modern invention; that part of the old earthenware, preserved in the British museum, which is supposed to have been of Roman manufacture, is not glazed. The vessels, which are called Etruscan, and which are supposed to be of greater antiquity than the Roman, have indeed a paint or polish on their surfaces; but that does not appear to resemble our modern saturnine vitrification.
[360]. The workmen who are employed at the glazing tub are subject to colics and paralysis.
[361]. The frequency with which the inhabitants of Madrid, and of a great part of New Castille in Spain, were harrassed with colic, as recorded by M. Thierry, received a satisfactory explanation from the fact of glazed earthenware having been universally used in that country for culinary vessels.
Sir G. Baker in a paper entitled “Further Observations on the Poisons of Lead,” Med. Trans. vol. 2, p. 419, mentions the practice of drinking cyder out of glazed earthen vessels as dangerous. Dr. Watson, junior, saw several instances of the Devonshire colic, during the time of harvest, apparently from this cause. And a similar instance fell under the notice of Dr. Charleston, where six persons became, at one time, paralytic, by drinking cyder, brought to them while at harvest work, in a new earthen pitcher, the inside of which was glazed. That the glazing was dissolved by the liquor appeared not only by the effects which it produced, but from its having given, as these persons informed Dr. Charleston, that astringent sweetish taste to the liquor, by which the solutions of this metal are so peculiarly distinguished.