Remarhs on Arsenic. 339 



Art. XIII. — Remarks on Arsenic, with draivings of the color of its 

 precipitates formed by reagents applied to them; by Dr. Lewis 

 Feuchtwanger. 



In subjoining tiie drawings of the precipitates, formed by the dif- 

 ferent tests for arsenious and arsenic acid, the greatest part of which 

 are copied from a German periodical work, called the Laboratory ; 

 I cannot forbear to announce, at the same time, some results to which 

 experience has led me during the last five years ; to these I shall add 

 some new facts of a case in which, during last summer, I had the honor 

 to assist Dr. Hare, in Philadelphia ; and I may be allowed to begin 

 with the medico-juridical process, and with my general views for de- 

 tecting and proving the existence of arsenic. If an individual has 

 been poisoned, we have in the first place to observe the four follow- 

 ing points. 



1. The person being yet alive, whether he has partly thrown up 

 the poison by vomiting ? In this case the vomited materials can be 

 examined. 



2. If the individual is alive and did not vomit any thing ? We have 

 then to give an emetic for the purpose of obtaining the contents of 

 the stomach. 



3. The individual may be living, but the vomited matters may have 

 been thrown away; the physician has then to observe the symptoms of 

 the whole disease. 



4. But if the individual is dead, we must proceed to the dissec- 

 tion of the stomach, the duodenum and the bowels, which with their 

 contents are to be taken out. 



By presuming now that the poison was arsenic, we examine : 

 . [a.) Whether the arsenic has been in solution in the stomach ; 



(b.) In the state of a powder, as white arsenic ; 



(c.) In the form of a sulphuret, as Orpiment ; 



(d.) In the state of an arsenide, as Scheel's green ; 



(e.) Or in its metallic state. 



Do we find it in the form of the two last mentioned ? Then it is in- 

 soluble in water, and the whole must be boiled with aqua regia, filter- 

 ed while hot, neutralized with ammonia, and then treated in the man- 

 ner I shall hereafter describe. 



If it was a sulphuret of arsenic, we must then boil it with nitrous 

 acid to form the arsenious acid. 



