Nicotine—the alkaloid—is a colourless or slightly amber-coloured, oily, volatile liquid. It is to this principle that the poisonous activity of the drug is due. It differs from the other oily alkaloid, conine, in appearing of a green colour when a drop is placed on the surface of white enamelled glass—conine having a pink colour. They both leave a greasy stain on paper. Nicotine has been detected by Stas‘s process in the tongue, stomach, lungs, and liver. A ptomaine not unlike nicotine has been discovered.
Symptoms.—Symptoms of poisoning by tobacco are by no means uniform, and have been variously described by observers. As a type of the effects produced, the following may be noticed as occurring to the tyro after his first or second “pipe”: The pulse is primarily quickened; then follow nausea and faintness, accompanied with an intense feeling of sinking. The face is blanched, the pulse slow; perspiration stands on the forehead, and ultimately he vomits, and then gradually recovers. Cold air blowing on the face, or sponging the face with cold water, materially hastens a return to comfort. Sometimes, as in the case related by Dr. Marshall Hall of a man who smoked two “pipes,” nausea, vomiting, and syncope occurred, followed by stupor, stertorous breathing, general spasms, and insensibility of the pupil. After an interval of a few hours, the above symptoms again returned, but from which the patient ultimately recovered. Death has resulted as a sequence to excessive smoking. Gruelin records two cases—one from seventeen, the other from eighteen, pipes smoked at a sitting. The symptoms after taking nicotine are more acute, and are a burning acrid taste in the mouth and throat, nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness, shock, sighing respirations, delirium, convulsions; the pupils first contracted then dilated.
The filthy habit of snuff-taking has also been accredited with one or two deaths. Santeuil, the French poet, died in two days from the effects of snuff mixed with his wine as a practical joke.
In animals, the symptoms are—nausea, vomiting, purging, convulsions, stupor, and death. The heart becomes paralysed. One drop of the empyreumatic oil on the tongue of a cat killed it in two minutes, the animal dying in convulsions.
Post-mortem Appearances.—These are by no means uniform or characteristic. If much vomiting precedes death, the vessels of the brain may be engorged with blood. Inflammation of the stomach and intestines is also present in some cases. The odour of nicotine may be detected in the vomit or the stomach contents.
Fatal Period.—The symptoms soon make their appearance, and death has occurred in three-quarters of an hour, or even less—in three minutes after taking the nicotine, in fifteen minutes after enema of tobacco.
Fatal Dose.—One to three drops of nicotine would probably kill an adult in a few minutes; an enema containing half a drachm of the leaves has proved fatal.
As an enema, tobacco should be used with extreme care.
Chemical Analysis.—Nicotine obtained by the usual process for alkaloid extraction, and mixed with water, may have the following tests applied after solution in dilute hydrochloric acid:
1. Chloride of platinum gives an orange-yellow crystalline precipitate.