188 MINERAL rOlSONS. 



a ball with calomel and aloes, and a quarter of a grain of opium, 

 may be substituted, and may be repeated until the bowels are 

 perfectly cleared out. The body should be afterwards kept so- 

 luble by castor oil ; for I have always observed that a costive 

 habit from paralytic torpor of the bowels remains some time after 

 the action of lead. 



Quicksilver. — When mercurial ointment is rubbed on dogs, 

 without muzzling or covering them, it is very common for them 

 to lick themselves, and to become, by* this means, fatally poisoned. 

 In such cases the stomach is usually but slightly affected, but a 

 diarrhoea of great violence follows, attended with bloody stools, 

 the consequence of ulceration in the bowels. In these cases, com- 

 mence the treatment by giving a mixture of castor oil and white 

 of eggs, in equal parts, sufficient to remove the offending matter ; 

 proceed next to wash off all the remaining ointment, and then give 

 opiates and astringents. — See Looseness. 



From this detail of appearances produced by the more active 

 mineral poisons, both before and after death (which are all drawn 

 from numerous and well-defined cases that too frequently came 

 under my notice), it will be apparent, that it is not difficult to dis- 

 criminate between the inflammatory symptoms brought on by their 

 agency, particularly when full doses have been given, from those 

 inflammations occasioned by cold or other causes. When caustic 

 mineral salts or acids have been taken, the symptoms are always 

 more urgent, the progress more rapid, and the pain and distress 

 greater than when inflammation has proceeded from other sources. 

 The foetor from the mouth, and the bloody vomitings and stools, 

 are also strong characteristics of acrid poisons in the living patient: 

 those to be gained after death are the inflammation and gangre- 

 nous state of the alimentary canal; but more particularly the ul- 

 cerated state of the stomachal and bowels, and the early tendency 



" It is not very unusual for the solvent power of the gastric juice to erode 

 through the coats of the stomach ; but, in such case, the opening is one 

 simple and determinate one only, and always situate at that part where the gra- 

 vity of the gastric fluid has placed it particularly in contact with the stomach, 

 and in no other. 



