XVIII.—Tse Retative DisrripuTtion oF ANTIMONY IN THE 
ORGANS AND TISSUES OF THE BODY, UNDER VARYING CONDITIONS. 
By R. H. Carrrenpen and Josrepnu A. Briaxg, B.A., Pa.B. 
OrRFILA, many years ago, proved that salts of antimony, like the 
salts of other metallic poisons, are absorbed and can be detected in 
the animal tissues and secretions, especially in the liver and kidneys; 
and further that the absorbed antimony is slowly discharged from 
these quarters through the medium of the urine. These early results 
were confirmed by other investigators, notably Danger and Flandin 
and by Panizza and Kramer, the latter of whom detected antimony, 
not only iu the urine, but also in the blood of a man during a course 
of tartar emetic.* Orfila’s work also indicated that while the elimina- 
tion of absorbed antimony commences very quickly, it is a compara- 
tively slow process; thus in one instance he stated ¢ that he found 
antimony in the fat, liver and bones of a dog that had taken, three 
months and a half before its death, 46°5 grains of tartar emetic dur- 
ing a period of ten days, and that similar results were obtained in a 
second case in which the interval was four months. Presumably, 
however, elimination is much more rapid than these figures would 
seem to indicate. 
Dr. Richardson, however, found antimony in abundant proportions 
in the liver, and in smaller proportions in the kidney and heart, 
twenty-one days after the last dose of antimony had been taken. As 
to the relative distribution of absorbed antimony, the experiments of 
Drs. Nevins and Richardson are the only important ones recorded. 
Dr. Nevins,{ experimenting on rabbits, with tartar emetic in doses of 
05,1 and 2 grains four times daily, found that the weakest rabbit 
died after taking 12 grains, the strongest after taking 72 grains of 
the poison. Other rabbits were killed at varying lengths of time 
after taking the last dose of poison (31, 14, 4, and 3 days), and in 
every case antimony was found in large quantity in the liver, in 
smaller quantities in the spleen and stomach. Antimony was 
likewise found in the kidneys and urine of those animals that survived 
for some time, also in the lungs and in those that lived 15 days, in 
* See Christison on Poisons, p. 372. + Traité de Toxicologie. 
+ See Reese, Manual of Toxicology, p. 259-260 and Woodman & Tidy, Forensic 
Medicine and Toxicology, p. 128-129. 
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