446 POISONING BY THE ARSENlATE OF POTASH. 
given up aud had died, I contented myself with prescribing mu¬ 
cilaginous drinks, and emollient injections, and said that I would 
see my patients again during the morning. 
Although I had no reason to doubt that the salt by which the 
horses had been poisoned was arseniate of potash, as the mer¬ 
chant had said, yet I was determined to ascertain the truth of the 
fact, and went immedately to M. Labarraque, with whom I had 
the good fortune to meet M. Chevallier. I asked them to ana¬ 
lyze the substance which I presented to them; they kindly con¬ 
sented, and the following was the result:— 
The salt was white, very heavy, and crystallized in a con¬ 
fused way. 1. Being thrown upon charcoal, it decrepitated, and 
a strong odour of garlic was perceived. 2. Being dissolved, the 
nitrate of silver threw down a brick-red precipitate, the sulphate 
of copper a hlueish-white one, and the neutral hydrochlorate of 
cobalt a rose-coloured one. 3. Being treated with sulphuretted 
hydrogen, with the assistance of heat, yellow sulphuret of arsenic 
was precipitated. 4. It strongly reddened turnsole paper. All 
these characters shewed plainly that it was an arseniate’^ 
Wishing to know its base, we made a concentrated solution 
of the arseniate ; to one portion of which we added, some chloru- 
ret of platinum, and a yellow precipitate was immediately formed. 
Another portion we tried with potash, which neither yielded any 
precipitate, nor any disengagement of ammoniacal gas. 
These experiments assured us that the substance was arseniate 
of potash. 
This analysis being terminated, by the advice of MM. Che¬ 
valier and Labarraque we had recourse to the hydrated trioxide of 
iron that had been lately recommended as an antidote against 
arsenic by Drs. Bangen and Berthold, of Gottingen. It was 
administered to each horse in the dose of about IJib, and be¬ 
ginning with him that seemed to be in the most dangerous 
state. He died in six hours after having taken the antidote; 
the second died at the end of 37 hours; and the third lived 
until the eighth day. 
I now proceed to give an account of the principal lesions ob¬ 
served in these animals on examination after death; and I will 
take them in the order in which they died. 
1. An entire horse, which died on his return from Versailles 
to Paris, about 13 hours after ingestion of the poison. The 
abdominal viscera were in their natural position; the peritoneum 
reddened, and the vessels that run along the intestinal bands 
highly injected. The stomach contained a yellow fluid, which 
was preserved ; the mucous membrane lining the right sac was 
of a red colour, approaching to scarlet; it had spots of ecchy- 
