99 Fatal Effects from tM 



cipient and milder state, from its ccneral prevalence, was 

 not recognised either by the other practitioners of the town 

 where I then resided, or niyseli, to be the genuine painters' 

 colic. 



This town, a sea-port in Essex, contained between three 

 and lour liiousand inhabitants, and at the time 1 speak of, 

 very many people, chiefly adults, and a greater proportion 

 of them men, complained of occasional violent colic pains, 

 chiefly occurring attcr meals, attended with an obstinate 

 coslivencss; and although these symptoms were for a time 

 relieved bv the use of purc:atives and other means, they al- 

 njost universally recurred. The progress of the disease, 

 even in those cases where it attained i;s utmost violence, 

 was in almost every instance so insidious and so slow, as 

 to leave us unapprehensive of its true character; which, 

 ho".vever, was at length brought to light in the following 

 manner : 



An infant, under twelve months, at the breast, who had 

 been subject to complaints arising from acidity of the food, 

 was tormented with most excruciating pain, apparently in 

 the bowels, attended by a very great degree of constipation, 

 and accompanied with violent straining efforts at evacua- 

 tion, resembling tenesmus. The sufl'erings of this poor 

 little child were in the highest degree distressing, and it 

 obtained but temporary relief from the warm bath, laxative 

 injections, those of an anodyne quality, the throwing up 

 into the rectum warm oil, opiates and purgatives combined, 

 or from any treatment whatever that could be suggested. 

 The seeing so unusually severe a case, suggested to my 

 mind the probability that some improper substances had 

 been exhibited to the little patient, and I was earnest in 

 my inquiries to this point. All my endeavours only ascer- 

 tained that the nurse had occasionally given the child a 

 tea spoonful or two of ardent spirit in its food; a practice, 

 which, although I much reprobated, I knew to be too com- 

 mon among nurses, solely to account for this violent dis- 

 ease. My patient at length fell a victim ; and a very short 

 time after, the father of the child regretting to me the mis- 

 mana<Tement of its nurse in giving it spirits, observed, that 

 he himself was occasionally tormented with pains in his 

 bowels, which he was inclined to attribute to drinking a 

 sintile cirlass of Hollands and water every night. This in- 

 duced a suspicion in mv mind ; and upon dropping into a 

 small quantitv of the spirits a single drop of the volatile 

 tincture of sulphur of the old London Pharmacopoeia, it 

 assumed a very dark colour, aflbrdiiig a certain evidence of 



its 



