THE AUSTBAL ASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
17 
villainy. Their history is a striking proof of the fact, that if modern discovery 
has given the agents for perpetrating crime, it has no less yielded the means 
for their scientific detection. 
Not the least interesting of many curious features connected with the pro- 
duction and consumption of certain poisons is the extraordinary quantities that 
are in some instances manufactured. What becomes of them P It is compara- 
tively easy to understand what is implied by one thousand Winchester quarts 
of chloroform, and one thousand, or even ten thousand, ounces of morphia ; 
but what of a poison like chloral ? It has already been stated that chloral is 
at present being manufactured by the hundredweight. This, however, as a 
matter of fact, falls far short of the reality, as one German manufacturer 
recently admitted the production of half a ton weekly in his laboratory alone. 
There is no recognised outlet for the consumption of this substance saving that 
of internal administration, and we confess the imagination gets baffled in 
endeavouring to estimate the hundreds of thousands of pain-stricken, weary 
mortals who must swallow an indefinite number of half-tons weekly, in doses 
of twenty or thirty, or at the most forty grains each. A number of years ago, 
something little short of a panic was occasioned by attention having been called 
to the fact that strychnine was being manufactured in enormous quantities, one 
thousand ounces having been known to be purchased at one time. What 
became of this extraordinary quantity was the question that not unnaturally 
seized the public mind. As a medicine, its use is necessarily very limited ; 
while its indiscriminate sale, or employment, as a destructive agent for vermin 
the only other legitimate purpose to which it is known to be applied— is 
restricted by legislative enactment. In such circumstances, it was reasonable to 
seek some other explanation for its enormous production, and the public mind 
somewhat mysteriously fixed upon beer as being the medium. For a time, it 
was currently believed that the bitter principle of the hop was substituted, or 
at least fortified, by the help of strychnine ; and although this was ultimately 
disproved, the mystery of the quantities in which it was being manufactured was 
only partially solved by the suggestion that it was probably destined for the 
colonies, to assist in exterminating vermin there. 
Still another curious fact remains to be noticed in connection with strych- 
nine the frequency with which it has been found in admixture with another 
neutral principle called santonme. Santonine is derived from the seeds of the 
Artemisia santonica (wormseed), and is much used in medicine as a simple 
vermifuge, particularly for children. It will therefore be at once understood 
that a mixture of the two substances means death to anyone getting such a 
dose ; and, as a matter of fact, deaths have occurred in our own country, in 
France, Spain, Germany, and in America, from this extraordinary cause. It will 
be kept in mind that we do not speak at present of a simple case of substitu- 
tion, in which the doctor or the druggist lifts and dispenses from the wrong 
bottle. Deaths, unfortunately, have occurred in this way also ; but, generally 
speaking, there is no mystery whatever about such cases. The mystery we refer 
to is, that santonine, which undoubtedly has been in the first instance derived 
from various sources, extending over a period of years, and in the experience of 
various nationalities, has been proved to be mixed with strychnine. Various 
suggestions and theories have been put forth to account for the fatality, 
and amongst others the probability that the santonica seeds may have been 
adulterated by other seeds resembling them, but strychnine-yielding ; and also 
that the cases of poisoning narrated were not caused by strychnine, but were 
actually produced by an overdose of santonine itself, acting on some peculiar 
idiosyncrasy of the constitution. This last suggestion is at once met by the 
direct fact, that strychnine was not only discovered in the majority of instances. 
