Toadstool Poisoning and its Treatment 



the tissue of dogs and cats dying from the late effects of the A. mus- 

 caria and A. phalloides and found them to be perfectly normal. 



Mr. V. K. Chestnut, in a bulletin published by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture (Circular No. 13, p. 23), states that death 

 from the A. phalloides is due to a destruction of the red-blood corpus- 

 cles. Upon what authority this assertion is made is not stated. The 

 conclusion has probably been based upon the venosity of the blood in 

 cases of poisoning resulting from the disturbance of the respiration and 

 circulation. The blood corpuscles of animals poisoned by all three of 

 the Amanitae studied have been counted repeatedly in our experiments 

 and in none of them has there been any appreciable reduction. 



It can be positively stated that death is not due to a destruction ol 

 the red blood cells. 



Further, the coloring matter of the blood (haemoglobin), which car- 

 ries oxygen to the tissues, has been examined with the spectroscope to 

 see if any new compound had been formed which would prevent it from 

 carrying oxygen. No such compound has been found no alteration 

 could be detected in the haemoglobin. It is quite evident that these 

 toadstools do not kill by their action on the blood, for in a number of 

 experiments the blood was examined a very short time before death. 



Thinking that they might act upon the nerve cells of the brain and 

 spinal cord very much as certain toxins of infectious diseases do, those 

 structures were examined by special staining methods (silver impregna- 

 tion), but no greater variation than is normal could be detected in any 

 of those examined. 



No statement can be made as to the cause of this late death, but it 

 would appear to be due to some disturbance of nutrition. 



Late death occurs not only in animals, but in most of the cases of 

 poisoning in man recorded in medical literature. 



The contrast between the early and late symptoms is not so great in 

 poisoning by A. phalloides and A. verna as in the case of poisoning by 

 A. muscaria. In the first two the serious symptoms appear early and 

 continue till the end ; in the last the early effects of the muscarine soon 

 passes off or can be removed by atropine, but the late symptoms, strik- 

 ingly in contrast with the early ones, still appear, and continue till death. 



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