POISONS. 189 



Treatment comprises certain general principles of great 

 importance. The poisonous action may be arrested, if 

 we be called in and make our diagnosis in good time, 

 either by preventing the taking up of the poison or its 

 irritant action on the tissues by intermingling it with 

 mucilaginous matter. In the case of irritants this measure 

 might be supplanted by dilution, but this only tends to 

 promote absorption, and therefore is inadmissible in the 

 case of those poisons which act from the blood. Adminis- 

 tration of such bland and mucilaginous agents as white of 

 eggj wheat flour, and meal, or even of blood, should be 

 one of the first measures resorted to in cases of poisoning 

 through the alimentary canal. It has this advantage, 

 that the albuminous matters in some instances chemically 

 unite with the poisons, and so convert them into insoluble 

 and harmless albuminates. This is the simplest means 

 of antidotal treatment. Antidotes are of two kinds, 

 chemical or physiological. The former when they meet 

 poisons exert chemical action upon them, giving rise to 

 harmless products. The latter are available in the case 

 of those agents which act from the blood ; they produce 

 the reverse physiological action, and thus tend to neutra- 

 lise the excessive effects of the agent. These effects also 

 must be counteracted as much as possible by such measures 

 as the case, viewed purely from a clinical point of view, 

 seems to require. Sometimes we are enabled by direct 

 methods to remove the poison from the system, as by 

 washing it off from the skin or by causing its expulsion 

 from the alimentary canal with greater rapidity than is 

 compatible with absorption. Thus, emetics, the stomach- 

 pump, and cathartic agents are valuable in the hands of 

 the toxicologist. 



In observing the post-mortem appearances we must 

 carefully examine the position of the animal, the state 

 of rigor mortis, also the tendency to putrefactive changes 

 in relation to the length of time which has existed 

 since death. The conditions of the surface of the body, 

 as indicating an easy death, or the reverse, should be 

 noted, and the markings of the animal, for 'purposes of 



