DIGITALIS PURPUREA. 249 
about midnight the colic and purging returned; afterwards 
general convulsions made their appearance, and a surgeon, who 
saw the patient at an early hour of the succeeding morning, 
found him violently convulsed, with the pupils dilated, and in- 
sensible, and the pulse slow, feeble, and irregular: coma gradu- 
ally succeeded, and death took place in twenty-two hours after 
the poison was swallowed. The post-mortem appearances are 
very imperfectly recorded in this case, and this is the more to 
be regretted, as a hiatus here remains in the toxicological his- 
tory of the drug, that much wants filling up” (Christ. on Poisons, 
3rd edit. p. 825). 
“It is sometimes customary in pharmaceutical laboratories, 
to leave tinctures upon the dregs, after they have stood a due 
time, and gradually to pour off the clear part for use; the dregs 
are afterwards pressed out, and the last portion of the tincture 
acquires, by this careless proceeding, double the strength of 
the first. A person suffering under hydrothorax, who had been 
in the habit of taking forty drops of tincture of Digitalis every 
night, went from home without his medicine, and was obliged 
to send to an apothecary in the country for an ounce of the 
tincture, of which he took his accustomed dose: its effects were 
much more violent than usual, and he died, exhausted by 
repeated fainting, in the morning” (Christ., op. cit.) 
Mr. Brande, in his Elements of Pharmacy, observes: “ I know 
an instance of a person who suffered under anasarca of the legs, 
and who applied for relief at a dispensary, where he received a 
box of pills (containing Digitalis), one of which he was directed 
to take three times a day. On the evening of the third day he 
complained of great debility and faintness, and in the course 
of the night vomiting and fainting fits came on. In the morning 
he died, upon attempting to get out out of bed” (Jd., op. cit.) 
© A man, fifty-five years of age, suffering from humid asthma, 
took about an ounce of Digitalis instead of a grain of the powder 
of the leaves. An hour after he ate some soup, which he 
immediately vomited. The vomitings continued, accompanied 
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