280 CASES OP POISONING 



are best dissolved in five to ten gallons of boiling water ; 

 cold water is added to make up a hundred gallons, which, 

 with careful dripping, will dip about a hundred sheep. The 

 sheep, held in the dip for forty to sixty seconds, is lifted on 

 to a sparred drainer placed over a second tub, or over a 

 trough communicating with the dipping tub, and the wool 

 well squeezed with the hands, or with a scraper. The head 

 must of course be kept out of the dip. 



Serious and fatal consequences sometimes, however, result 

 from the use of arsenical dipping mixtures. A Lincolnshire 

 breeder, twenty hours after dipping 150 half-bred Leicester 

 sheep, lost eleven, and several some days later. A greatly 

 more serious case occurred at Burton, in Northumberland, 

 during the summer of 1858. Mr. Black of Burton, pur- 

 chased from Mr. J. Elliot, chemist, Berwick-on-Tweed, 

 fifteen packets of dipping mixture. Every packet contained 

 twenty ounces each of arsenic and soda ash, and two ounces 

 of sulphur, and was directed to be dissolved, with four pounds 

 of soft soap, in three or four gallons of boiling water. With 

 forty-five gallons of cold water subsequently added, this 

 made sufficient for fifty sheep. Mr. Black had 869 sheep 

 dipped in the usual manner ; the apparatus and arrange- 

 ments were good, and the dripping was satisfactory. In two 

 days, however, the sheep began to die ; they were seized 

 much in the same order as they had been dipped, and within 

 a month 850 had perished. In many cases the symptoms 

 appeared suddenly, and Mr. Bird, veterinary surgeon in 

 attendance, records that several died in twenty minutes after 

 he had observed them eating or ruminating, and apparently 

 well. The symptoms were dulness and nausea, frothing at 

 mouth, bloodshot eyes, pain in the bowels, discharge of 

 black and bloody urine, laboured breathing, blackening of 

 the skin, with the wool falling off in patches, especially about 

 the back and loins. Post-mortem examination discovered 

 the bowels inflamed, and covered with patches of extra- 

 vasated blood, the lungs blackened and inflamed, the liver, 

 black, soft, and friable, the spleen congested, the bladder 

 empty. On analysis arsenic was found in the stomachs and 

 bowels. 



The case came to trial at Newcastle in February 1859, and 



