POISONING OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
31 
went to the divin and all the sorcerers in repute. & This 
induced M. Ayrauit to make an experiment to convince 
the people that he was right in his opinion, lest some of 
them might deny the fact of the ass being poisoned by 
arsenic. He got a horse from the knacker’s, and gave him 
15 grammes of arsenious acid, mixed with two measures of 
oats, which the horse ate. He died fifty- three hours after- 
vrards, after having suffered the same as the asses had done. 
Autopsy likewise disclosed the same as had been seen before. 
And what added to the interest of the last case was, that a 
dog in the knacker’s yard died four hours after having eaten 
of the flesh of this horse. 
By the study of the symptoms of these different empoison- 
ments, we learn in some measure the progress of the poison 
in the animal economy. Thus, at the beginning, we observe 
the topical symptoms provoked by the entrance of the poison 
into the stomach. And this is the only moment when there 
is any chance of cure, by administering the oxydes of iron or 
manganese, which neutralise by combination with it the 
effects of the arsenious acid. Later than this ; when the 
comatose condition, pulsations of the heart, embarrassed 
respiration, and particular colorisation of the mucous mem- 
branes, come to indicate absorption of the poison, and that it 
has entered the circulation, then it is no longer possible to 
neutralise the arsenious acid, the disorder it has now pro- 
duced being incurable. Among the cases I have been relating, 
it is quite certain that, had I had any reason to suspect 
arsenical interposition, the ass which fell in sixty hours might 
have been saved the same as the last. 
SECOND OBSERVATION. 
On the 18th March, 1851, I was summoned by Louis 
Thibandeau, farmer, at Provins, near Niort, to bleed a fine 
young colt that had fallen ill that afternoon. It was then six 
o’clock in the evening. I went to the farm and examined the 
colt, which I found ready to die of an affection which I had 
not then been able to make out, if there had not been found 
in his manger pellets, made of bran, composing no part of its 
ordinary food. This information brought to my mind the 
asses of Martigny, and in this new circumstance I suspected 
poisoning, as in the preceding case. The peroxyde of iron 
was prescribed to no purpose. The next morning the owner 
came to me, to say, the colt was dead ; and that his brother, 
Fran 5 ois Thibandeau, his neighbour, had found in the man- 
ger of his mules a packet, containing a white powder, but 
that the mules had neither touched the paper nor the powder. 
