ANTIMONIAL POISONING. 
349 
Speaking from general observation regarding the effects of 
antimony on the body, I have always inferred that it is a safe 
medicine. I have seen all its effects. I have seen it act as a 
purgative, as an emetic, as a diaphoretic and as a diuretic. I 
have watched its effect in depressing the circulation ; and, in 
one instance, in the case of an Essex farmer, suffering from 
acute pneumonia, and who took half a grain of tartar emetic 
every three hours for six days, I witnessed the peculiar erup- 
tion on the skin which sometimes appears. The body was so 
generally covered with pustules, that the friends of the patient 
mistook the eruption for smallpox — a natural error. But in 
all these observations, which run current I doubt not with the 
experience of my professional brethren, I have never, except 
in the two instances described above, suspected that the drug 
was exerting any other than a curative effect. When the 
medicine has purged, I have usually observed that the skin 
was dry, and have accounted for the purgation by supposing 
that the abundance of one excretion was the result of the 
partial suppression of the other — a fair physiological inference. 
When fatal cases under antimonial treatment have occurred, 
the result, if I have not been deceived, has been due to the 
disease, not to the remedy. If I have been deceived, the 
error has arisen from the fact that antimony sets up an under- 
current of symptoms which have not been, as yet, understood 
or explained. 
The symptoms usually laid down as specific evidence of 
antimonial poisoning are such as arise from the administration 
of the drug in a large dose — say from ten to forty grains. 
Few cases of this kind have been recorded, and the greater 
part of them are collected by Dr. Taylor in his ‘ Medical 
Jurisprudence.’ The leading features of these cases were 
vomiting, purging, spasms — symptoms, in a word, analogous 
to those of cholera. 
The pathological lesions were, injection of the peritoneum ; 
an inflamed aspect of the duodenum ; a whitish-yellow viscid 
secretion throughout the alimentary canal ; intense redness of 
the stomach, in the course of the greater curvature, but with- 
out ulceration; great vascularity of the brain. In one case 
there was effusion into the right pleura ; the low T er lobe of the 
right lung was redder than usual. These symptoms and 
pathological lesions were the results due to the administration 
of one large and fatal dose. They are, comparatively speak- 
ing, easily accounted for. 
But may antimony prove fatal in a more insidious way 
from small and continued doses? That is the great point for 
inquiry. 
xxix. 45 
