1824.] Slotv, Consecutive, and Accumulative Poisoning. 443 



distinctions upon which it is founded, will be of great service in 

 establishing fixed and definite notions with regard to the chronic 

 operation of poisons. It may perhaps be useful to present the 

 reader with a synoptical recapitulation of the subject. 



A Slotv Poison. — A single dose is sufficient; which produces 

 upon its administration no sensible effect, but gradually 

 undermines the health. 

 A Consecutive Poison. — A single dose is sufficient ; producing 

 the most violent symptoms, very shortly after its inges- 

 tion, but which gradually subside, and the patient is sup- 

 posed cured ; when, at some future period, death takes 

 place from the organic lesions that had been occasioned. 

 An Accumulative Poison. — Many doses are required ; the 

 effects being produced by the repetition of doses which 

 would, individually, be harmless. 

 There still remains another point of view in which it is essen- 

 tial to regard the operation of a poison, in order to establish a 

 distinction between those substances which, in a given dose, 

 will destroy life under every circumstance of constitution, and 

 those which occasion death in consequence of some constitu- 

 tional peculiarity in the individual to whom they may have been 

 administered, and which are innocuous to the general mass of 

 mankind ; the gradations by which food, medicine, and poison, 

 are thus enabled to branch into each other cannot be defined, 

 because the circumstances with which they are related, defy 

 generalization. The distinction, however, must be acknowledged 

 and preserved, and we know no terms better adapted for express- 

 ing it than those of Absolute and Relative poisons ; and our 

 readers are accordingly requested to receive them in conformity 

 with this explanation, whenever they occur in the following 

 pages. Every work professing to treat the subject of poisons,, 

 abounds with instances, in which articles that, by universal con- 

 sent, are considered innocuous, have occasioned the most dire- 

 ful effects. Morgagni relates a case of a person who died from 

 eating bread made with the farina of the chesnut. Dr. Winter- 

 bottom* nays that he is subject to severe nettle-rash after eating 

 sweet almonds. Schenkius relates a case in which the general 

 law of astringents and cathartics was always reversed. Donatus 

 tells us of a boy whose jaws swelled, whose face broke out in 

 spots, and whose lips frothed, whenever he eat an egg : we 

 might add many more examples, but it is needless to encumber 

 a subject with illustrations which is already so obvious and 

 indisputable. Nor do ihe anomalies of constitutional idiosyn- 

 crasies end here, for they not only convert fond into poison, but 

 thev change poison into food, or at least into a harmless repast. 

 The most extraordinary exemplification of this on record is con- 



• Sec Medico] Facta and Observations, vol. v. 



•f- See M. PouqUeville'l " Voyage de Mon'-e," also Mr. Thornton's Travels; and 

 Notes to 1/ord Byron's Cliildc Harold's Pilgrimage. 



