[228]. London Medical Repository, August, 1817.
[229]. The truth of this statement has been very satisfactorily established by the experiments of Orfila (Toxicologie générale considerée sous les Rapports de la Physiologie, de la Pathologie, et de la Medicine légale) as well as by several that have been performed in this country.
Tortosa (Istituzioni di Med. For.) has remarked that Opium may act mortally without losing much of its weight in the stomach—I should question the truth of this assertion.
[230]. Vegetable acids are in Nature rarely the vehicles of poisons, the most deleterious plants being inert in those parts that are impregnated with acid; the pulp of the fruit of the Strychnus, amongst many others, offers an illustration of this fact. Virey.
[231]. Notwithstanding this fact, we find Venesection recommended in works on Toxicology, as a safe precaution to be used against the inflammatory action produced by arsenic.
The application of a ligature above an abraded surface to which a poison has been applied, prevents its effects upon the constitution, not so much by obliterating the capacity of the vessels, as by inducing a local plethora, and so suspending the process of absorption.
[232]. Escharotic from ἐσχαρόω, crustam induco, to scab over, to burn into a crust.
[233]. Or in a still more striking manner, by holding over the surface of the sore a piece of white paper moistened by the mixed solutions of Nitrate of Silver and Arsenious Acid, when the disengaged Ammonia will by the operation of double affinity enable the Arsenious Acid to decompose the salt of Silver, and to display the presence of the Arseniate of that metal by its characteristic yellow indication. I am not acquainted with any test for Ammonia so summary and satisfactory as this. See Arsenicum in Vol. 2 of this work.
[234]. There are four species of worms generated in the human intestines, viz. The Tænia, or tape-worm—Tricocephalus, or Trichuris—Ascaris Vermicularis, or Ascarides—and Lumbricoides.
[235]. It is a very curious fact that vegetable bitter should be so essential to the wellbeing of the higher order of animals, as explained at page 79, and yet prove so generally destructive to insects. Flies are almost immediately destroyed by an Infusion of Quassia, and Nature has protected the ear from the invasion of insects by providing an intensely bitter secretion.