THE POISONOUS PROPERTIES OF NITRATE OF SILVER, AND A RECENT CASE OF POISONING WITH THE SAME.
[Footnote: Read before the Medico Legal Society, April 5, 1883.]
By HENRY A. MOTT, JR., Ph.D., etc.
Of the various salts of silver, the nitrate, both crystallized and in sticks (lunar caustic, Lapis infernalis), is the only one interesting to the toxicologist.
This salt is an article of commerce, and is used technically and medicinally.
Its extensive employment for marking linen, in the preparation of various hair dyes (Eau de Perse, d'Egypte, de Chiene, d'Afrique), in the photographer's laboratory, etc., affords ample opportunity to use the same for poisoning purposes.
Nitrate of silver possesses an acrid metallic taste and acts as a violent poison.
When injected into a vein of an animal, even in small quantities, the symptoms produced are dyspnoea,[1] choking, spasms of the limbs and then of the trunk, signs of vertigo, consisting of inability to stand erect or walk steadily, and, finally retching and vomiting, and death by asphyxia. These symptoms, which have usually been attributed to the coagulating action of the salt upon the blood, have been shown not to depend upon that change, which, indeed, does not occur, but upon a direct paralyzing operation upon the cerebro-spinal centers and upon the heart; but the latter action is subordinate and secondary, and the former is fatal through asphyxia.
[Footnote 1: Nat. Dispensatory. Alf. Stille & John M. Maisch, Phila., 1879, p. 232.]