14 
THE AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY. 
CURIOSITIES OF POISONS. 
In popular language, a poison is a substance which, administered in small doses, 
destroys life. Obviously, however, the toxicologist must of necessity enlarge 
the definition, and embrace many substances not generally accepted as poisons. 
No one outside the faculty would, for example, consider such well-known 
medicines as cream of tartar, tartaric acid, alum, Epsom salts, and even ordinary 
table salt to be poisons, and yet each of these substances has been the cause of 
more than one accidental or criminal fatality. Not only so, but the commonest 
of domestic remedies may be made, by abuse, to come under the cognisance of 
the toxicologist. A number of years ago, a paragraph appeared in some of the 
medical journals concerning the death of an innkeeper from the effects of a 
quack pill. It appeared that the man was in the habit of taking the pills to 
such excess that he was often obliged to send for medical advice to cure him. 
Being warned against the danger of the practice, he began to take them in 
secret, excusing the number that he still continued to buy by stating that he 
gave them to his horses. A 'post-mortem examination left no doubt whatever 
about the cause of his death. We merely quote the case to show the truth of 
the aphorism, that while a poison may in small doses be a medicine, a medicine 
in large doses may also be a poison. 
Modern investigation and discovery, especially into those subtle and active 
principles derived from the vegetable kingdom, have undoubtedly done much to 
enlarge the scope, and render the study of toxicology more elaborate and difficult 
than it was in more remote times. Still, early investigators seem to have been 
aware of what, even in this enlightened age, may be called a fundamental 
principle of the treatment of cases of poisoning — namely, the prevention of the 
absorption of the poison into the system. Thus, Nicander, Galen, and Dioscorides 
all recommend the application of cupping instruments, sucking the wound, 
cauterising with hot irons, and the application of leeches in the treatment of 
bites from venomous animals and insects. On the same principle, hot oil was a 
common remedy for internal poisoning, on the supposition that the oil not only 
acted as a quick emetic, but also prevented the poison from being absorbed into 
the system. It is curious to notice in passing how thoroughly modern practice is 
in accord with the principles here laid now nearly seventeen centuries ago. Let 
anyone, however ignorant in other respects, be bitten by a dog or cat, particu- 
larly in the summer season, when rabies is thought to prevail, and the first 
impulse is to get the wound cauterised. If this is impossible, the more primitive 
plan of sucking the wound is almost instinctively adopted. In like manner, for 
internal poisoning there is scarcely an instance, even with all the many subtle 
organic poisons of the present time, in which the free administration of emetics, 
followed by oleaginous or mucilaginous drinks, to prevent absorption, is not 
applicable. Again, it was remarked by Avicenna, in the beginning of the 
eleventh century, that venesection should not take place unless where the poison 
was distributed over the whole system, as, when the veins were full, the poison 
could not get admission into them. The wisdom of this observation has been 
amply confirmed by the researches of Orfila, Magendie, Paris, and others in the 
present century. Not only have such specialists investigated the action of 
poisons on the human system, and thus demonstrated what was previously, to a 
great extent, mere conjecture, but they have also instituted a scientific treatment 
of poisoning, which sharply marks the toxicology of the present time from that 
of any other age — namely, the use of chemical antidotes. The importance of 
this last point can only be properly estimated when we consider the number and 
potency of many of the chemical and medicinal poisons discovered in recent times. 
