1824.] Slow, Consecutive, and Accumulative Poisoning. 441 



chopped fine,* constitutes the active ingredient of a slow poison 

 frequently employed in Turkey, and that it induces by irritation 

 a chronic disease resembling cancer. With respect to the 

 danger arising from the ingestion of diamond dust, enamel pow- 

 der, powdered glass, and the like, there still may be said to 

 exist some difference of opinion. Caldani, Mandruzzato,-)- and 

 M. Le Sauvage, have reported experiments made upon men and 

 inferior animals, in which no bad consequences followed the 

 administration of such bodies ; whereas Schurigius^; and Carda- 

 nus§ cite instances where persons have died of ulcerations of the 

 stomach from such causes ; and this opinion receives the sup- 

 port of Plouquet,|| Stoll,** Gmelin,++ Fodere,JJ Mahon,§§ 

 Franck,|||| and many others. The modern pathologist will not 

 find much difficulty in reconciling such conflicting testimony. 

 The experimentalist may administer mechanical substances a 

 thousand times without producing any ill effects, while, under 

 certain circumstances, the most trivial body may lodge in the 

 intestines and produce death ; but surely the occasional occur- 

 rence of such accidents ought not to confer the general tide of 

 poison upon the substances which may happen to produce them. 



Having thus disposed of a considerable number of bodies, 

 which have been classed as slow poisons, we may proceed to 

 observe that most of the other substances which have found a 

 place in the same division, appear to us to deserve consideration 

 under a very different head, and that we shall get rid of much 

 obscurity by adopting the following arrangement. 



2. Consecutive Poisoning. — Where the patient, having reco- 

 vered from the acute effects occasioned by the ingestion of a 

 single dose of poison, subsequently suffers a series of symptoms 

 from the injured structure to which it had given origin. By 

 referring to our definition of slow poisoning, we shall at once 

 perceive the striking and important distinction between that 

 and consecutive poisoning. The following case, related by M. 

 Orfila, may serve as an illustration. Maria Ladan drank by 

 mistake a spoonful of aquafortis, the most violent symptoms 

 supervened, but which by judicious treatment gradually sub- 

 sided, when at length she passed by stool a long membranous 

 substance, rolled up, and which represented the form of the seso- 

 phagus and stomach, and which, in fact, was found to be the 

 interior membrane of these organs ; from that moment the sen- 



* Old women in the country recommend the same remedy for the destruction of 

 worms; probably the medicine and the poison may he equally effective. 

 + Saggi Scicntif. e Letter, dell' Accadcniia di 1'adova, torn. iii. p, II, p. I. 

 % Chylologia. 

 § l)e Vcnenis. 



j| Comment, super Homicid. p. lit. 

 M Ratio Mcdendi. Tart VI. p. 60. 

 ++ Hist. General de Vcnenis Mineral. 

 It Med. Leg. toni. ii. p. 170. 

 S3 Tom. ii. p. S46. 

 ||j| Man. dc Toxicol. 



