The inner membrane of the windpipe is said to be sometimes affected with inflammatory redness. Jaeger found it so in animals;[[772]] and the symptoms referrible to the windpipe during life would lead us to expect the same thing in man.
The organs of generation are occasionally affected. The penis in the male and the labia in the female have been found distended and black; in an interesting case related by Bachmann the external parts of generation (in a female) were surrounded by gangrene;[[773]] and in a case related in Pyl’s collection the inside of the uterus and Fallopian tubes was inflamed.[[774]] It is probable that signs of inflammation in the internal organs of generation will be found if there have been corresponding symptoms during life. But in truth this part of the pathology of poisoning with arsenic has not been particularly attended to.
To complete this account of the morbid appearances of the mucous membranes, it may be added that the conjunctiva of the eyes frequently presents vascularity and spots of extravasation.[[775]]
It now only remains, under the head of the morbid appearances produced by arsenic, to mention certain alterations that are said to take place in the state of the blood and general condition of the body.
With regard to the state of the blood Sir B. Brodie observes in general terms, that in animals killed by arsenic it is commonly fluid.[[776]] Harles, on the authority of Wepfer, Sproegel, and Jaeger, says it is black, semi-gelatinous, and sometimes pultaceous.[[777]] Novati alleges that the blood after death is without exception black and liquid as after cholera, of a blackish-purple tint that colours linen reddish-brown, viscid, opaque, and without any trace of coagulation.[[778]] In a fatal case related by Wildberg the blood was everywhere fluid.[[779]] This condition, however, is not uniform; for Dr. Campbell found the blood coagulated in the heart of a rabbit;[[780]] and Wepfer found it also coagulated in the dog.[[781]]
It has been stated by some authors in medical jurisprudence that the dead body occasionally exhales an aliaceous odour, resembling that of sublimed arsenic. This is a very questionable statement. The only fact of the kind worth mentioning is one brought forward by Dr. Klanck, as occurring in the course of certain experiments, which will presently be noticed, on the antiseptic virtues of arsenic. Several animals which had been killed with arsenic are said to have exhaled an odour like that of sublimed arsenic from three to eight weeks after death.[[782]]
A great discordance of opinion at one time prevailed among authors, as to the influence of arsenic on the putrefactive process in the bodies of those poisoned with it. The vulgar idea, borrowed probably from the ancient classics, that the bodies of those who have been poisoned decay rapidly, was till lately the prevalent doctrine of medical men, and even of medical jurists; and it was applied to arsenic as well as other poisons. Even so lately as 1776 we find Gmelin stating in his History of Mineral Poisons, that the bodies of those who have died of arsenic pass rapidly into putrefaction, that the nails and hair often fall off the day after death, and that almost the whole body quickly liquefies into a pulp.[[783]] A similar statement has been made in 1795 by a respectable author, Dr. John Johnstone.[[784]] It appears that this rapid or premature decay does really occur in some instances. Thus in a case related by Plattner of death from arsenic administered as a seasoning for mushrooms, the body had a very putrid odour the day after death.[[785]] Loebel also asserts he found by experiments on animals, that after death from arsenic putrefaction took place rapidly, even in very cold weather.[[786]]
In other instances the body probably decays in the usual manner. For example, in Rust’s Magazin is related the case of a child who died in six hours of poisoning with arsenic, and in whose body, fourteen days after death, the integuments were found considerably advanced in putrefaction, and the liver and kidneys beginning to soften.[[787]] In the case of a man who died in two days, and in whose body arsenic was found by MM. Chapeau and Parisel throughout many of the tissues, “putrefaction was so far advanced eight days after death as to render the examination of parts obscure.”[[788]] And in the course of some experiments on dogs poisoned with the oxide Dr. Seeman found the usual changes after five months’ interment.[[789]]
But it has been proved in recent times that in general arsenic has rather the contrary tendency—that, besides the antiseptic virtues which it has been long known to exert when directly applied in moderate quantity to animal substances, it also possesses the singular property of enabling the bodies of men and animals poisoned with it both to resist decay unusually long, and to decay in an unusual manner. The observations and inquiries which have been made abroad on this subject were little known any where else than in Germany before the publication of the earlier editions of the present work; but parallel examples have been since met with both in Britain and France; and in this country the importance of the subject is generally appreciated.
The first occasion on which the antiseptic property of arsenic was brought under public notice was about the beginning of the present century, in the course of the trial of the widow of a certain state-councillor, Ursinus of Berlin. Some time before that Dr. Welper, then medical inspector in the Prussian capital, having remarked that the body of a person poisoned with arsenic remained quite fresh for a whole week in summer, he attended carefully to the subject at every opportunity, and invariably, he says, found that the body resisted putrefaction. Not long after making this remark, he was concerned in 1803, by virtue of his office, in the investigations in the case of the widow Ursinus. This lady having been discovered in an attempt to poison her servant, suspicions arose regarding the previous sudden death of three persons in her family, her husband, a young officer who had carried on an amour with her, and an aunt from whom she derived an inheritance. They had all died in mysterious circumstances, and the lady had been their only nurse. Dr. Welper disinterred the bodies of the husband and aunt, which had been buried, the former two years and a half before at Berlin, the latter half a year afterwards at Charlottenberg; and he found them not putrid, but dried up; and specks of an appearance, which is described as being gangrene, but which was probably warty extravasation, were visible in the stomach. Arsenic could not be detected.