A very singular set of cases was lately brought under notice by Mr. Gurney Turner, where poisoning seemed to have been occasioned by the external application or inhalation of the fine dust used for imitating gilding by painters, paper-stainers, and porcelain-painters, and which is said to be essentially brass in a state of fine division. The workmen who use it, are very apt to be attacked with irritation about the private parts, and a vesicular eruption about the hairs on the pubes,—with loss of appetite, tendency to vomiting, and other symptoms of irritation in the stomach,—with obstinate constipation,—with soreness and dryness of the throat and irritation in the nose,—and with want of sleep, and a remarkable greenness of the hair over the whole body.[[1117]]
Section III.—Of the Morbid Appearances caused by Copper.
The appearances found in the body after death by poisoning with copper are chiefly the signs of inflammation.
Where death takes place very rapidly, however, it is probable, that no diseased appearance whatever will be perceptible. At least this was the case in the animals experimented on by Drouard and Orfila; and little doubt can therefore be entertained that the result would be the same with man also in similar circumstances.
When death ensues more slowly, as in the only fatal cases yet on record of its action on man, the marks of inflammation coincide with the signs of irritation during life. The best account I have seen of the morbid appearances under such circumstances is in the cases related by Pyl, by Wildberg, by Wibmer, and by Dégrange.
In Pyl’s case the whole skin was yellow. The intestines, particularly the lesser intestines, were of an unusual green colour, inflamed, and here and there gangrenous. The stomach was also green; its inner coat was excessively inflamed; and near the pylorus there was a spot as big as a crown, where the villous coat was thick, hard, and covered with firmly adhering verdigris. The lungs are likewise said to have been inflamed. The blood was firmly coagulated.
In the cases related by Wildberg, which are very like each other, the skin on various parts, and particularly on the face, was yellow, but on the depending parts livid. The outer coat of the stomach and intestines was here and there inflamed; and the inner coat of the former was very much inflamed, and even gangrenous[[1118]] near the pylorus and cardia. The duodenum and jejunum, and likewise the gullet, were in a similar state. The blood in the heart and great vessels was black and fluid.
In the case of the girl referred to by Wibmer, the skin was ochre-yellow, the stomach green, much inflamed, especially near the pylorus, the gullet and intestines also inflamed, the diaphragm red, the brain healthy, the lungs and heart “gorged with thick blood.”
In the case of poisoning with carbonate of copper described by Dégrange [p. [348]], in which, however, it is probable that death was accelerated by a fall, there was found congestion of the surface of the brain, arborescent redness of the gullet and a green sand over its surface, general greenness of the villous coat of the stomach, with vascularity of the fundus and points of superficial ulceration, greenness of the whole intestines, with black vascular ecchymosed spots and softening, except in the ileum, and redness of the inner surface of the heart. Copper was detected in the contents of the stomach and intestines.
The intestines have been found perforated by ulceration, and their contents thrown out into the sac of the peritonæum. Portal has related one case where the small intestines were perforated, and several where the perforation was in the rectum, which portion of the intestines, as well as the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum, was also extensively ulcerated.[[1119]]