being propagated; for every one who partakes of it has his urine similarly affected. Thus with a very few amanitæ, a party of drunkards may keep up their debauch for a week."
This property of the amanita, at once places it in a separate category from all other organic poisons, it has yet to be shewn upon what this intoxicating fungus depends for its activity. Whether some secretion is formed in the tissue of the plant, or whether some new arrangement of the particles of matter or modification of the sporules, is brought about by entering the system, it is impossible to say. Langsdorf states that the small deep-coloured specimens of amanita, and thickly covered with warts, are said to be more powerful than those of a larger size and paler colour. As the effect is not produced until from one to two hours after swallowing the bolus, and as a pleasant intoxication may be obtained by this agent for a whole day, and from one dose only, there is a defined line between this and the ordinary narcotics and stimulants in common use. That the digestive powers of the stomach have no influence over the intoxicating properties of the plant, is manifested in the fact, that the active principle passes into the urine, not only not deteriorated but apparently increased, for, as we have seen, a teacup of the urine from a man, intoxicated by taking the amanita into his stomach, will cause him to be more powerfully intoxicated than by the
original dose. We have, therefore, but two conjectures left for consideration, either the original intoxicating principle is excreted from the system in a condensed form, in which case its indestructibility by digestion, makes it approach the ordinary organic poisons, or there must be an increase of the toxic agent, in which case we must suppose a reproductive process having taken place in the system. "There is," says Dr. Mitchell, "in the wild regions of our western country, a disease called the milk sickness, the trembles, the tires, the slows, the stiff-joints, the puking fever, &c." The animals affected with this disease, "stray irregularly, apparently without motive;" they lose their power of attention, and finally tremble, stagger, and die. "When other animals—men, dogs, cats, poultry, crows, buzzards, and hogs, drink the milk or eat the flesh of a diseased cow, they suffer in a somewhat similar manner." This disease is attributed by Dr. Mitchell to the animals having grazed on pasture contaminated with mildew, and the resemblance to the effects of the amanita, together with the persistence of the specific principle within the fluids and tissues of the body, render it more than probable that to some fungoid growth, is due the peculiar toxic effects here noticed. Further: "The animals made sick by the beef of the first one, have been in their turn the cause of a like affection in others; so that three or four have thus fallen victims successively." De Graaf states, that butter
made from the milk of diseased cows, though heated until it caught fire, did not lose its deleterious properties. The urine of diseased animals, collected and reduced by evaporation, produced the characteristic symptoms. All these facts point to some peculiarity in the properties of matter not yet investigated or at least not explained. If we may assume that reproduction is here an element of the persistence and apparent multiplication of active matter, I know only of one instance to compare with it. A gentleman about to deliver a lecture on the properties of arsenic, and its history generally, made two solutions of a given quantity of arsenious acid, in the following manner. He took a certain amount of distilled water, and the same of filtered Thames water, and made his solutions of arsenic by separate boilings, he then as soon as possible placed the liquids in identical bottles, carefully prepared for their reception. In the one which contained the arsenic boiled in river water, the hygrocrocis is now growing, while that boiled in distilled water remains perfectly limpid and free from any vegetable production. There can scarcely be a doubt, that the filtration of river water was not sufficiently purifying to remove the minute spores of some lower forms of vegetation, which not only live in arsenic but have resisted the temperature employed in boiling an arsenical solution to saturation.
As to the first class, or truly reproductive and
morbid poisons, the most heterogenous ideas have from all time existed. I have introduced the notice of the above poisons, viz. the Amanita, and that which engenders the milk sickness, to compare the results of the morbid poisons on the human body with them, and also to associate them with the effects of diseased grain. From the Amanita and that other fungoid matter which is said to produce the milk sickness, there appears to be a purely toxic action on the system, but in the instance of diseased grain, a blood disease, ending in gangrene, or a specific and peculiar action of the generative organs is the consequence, and where the latter occurs, the poison usually expends itself on these parts, either by inducing abortion, or augmenting the catamenial secretion.
Now, the morbid poisons, if studied only in their results, shew that there is a combination of these two actions. There is usually, in the first place, a toxic or poisonous action, and secondly, a deteriorating or decomposing action on the blood, by which there is a tendency to low or asthenic inflammation and gangrene. It matters not what form of fever we take as an illustration, whether intermittent, pestilential, or exanthematous, either will serve the purpose of shewing how completely the effects of vegetable organic poisons resemble those which for the sake of distinction (I suppose) have been denominated Morbid Poisons.
Take an attack from the paludal poison. It is
usually ushered in with head-ache, weariness, pains in the limbs, and thirst, with other symptoms; all these are indicative of a poisonous agent in the blood: then come the full phenomena of the disease at a longer or shorter interval, and tending ultimately to destroy some organ of the body. The mind suffers during the course of the attack, and delirium occasionally happens. In severe cases of this disease, which were more frequent formerly than now, coma, delirium, and frenzy were observed at the commencement of the attack, and a tendency to rapid disorganization of one or several of the viscera.
If we take the effects of poison of Erysipelas, of Scarlet Fever, or Plague, in each we find at the onset more or less general derangement of the system, usually with cerebral disturbance and disordered action of all the dynamic forces of the body, which clearly indicate the action of a poison; then, unless some favourable symptoms arise, the blood exhibits a steady advance towards disorganization, and sphacelation of one or more tissues or parts of the body ensues. In Erysipelas the force of the diseased action is expended on the skin, and subcutaneous cellular tissue; in Scarlet Fever the fauces ulcerate, and slough and the parotids suppurate; in the Plague there is a general tendency to putrefaction, and the formation of glandular abscesses with sphacelas. Without going any further into this matter, for my present intention is merely to draw