POISONING BY COLCHICUM. 
435 
the only clearly proven instance of the baneful effects of the 
buttercup that I remember to have met with, and hence I 
have thought it advisable, whilst on the subject of vegetable 
poisoning, to place it on record. 
But how often does the country practitioner meet with 
cases, undoubtedly of poisoning, where the agent and the 
symptoms are alike mysterious ! Many such do I recollect, 
and one which, for two or three reasons, it may not be with¬ 
out interest to relate in this place. A farmer residing some 
five or six miles from this town, in the summer of 1854, made 
a claim on one of the fire insurance companies here for the 
value of several yearling cattle, said to have been lost from 
the effects of lightning. The circumstances under which the 
claim was made not seeming quite satisfactory to the directors 
of the company, I was requested by these gentlemen to visit 
the farm in question, and investigate and report on the 
matter; and perhaps the facts of the case will best appear in 
the exact words of the report I then made, of which the fol¬ 
lowing is a correct copy. It bears date June 12th, 1854. 
“ Report. 
se In compliance with the request of the Secretary to the 
Shropshire and North Wales Insurance Company, I went 
over to Wheatley on the evening of Friday, the 9th inst., 
for the purpose of inspecting some cattle said to have been 
affected by lightning. One of these cattle—a two-year-old 
heifer—I found lying dead beneath a tree, in a field near the 
house; and another—a yearling bullock—was lying stretched 
at length under a hedge in the same field, evidently in a 
dying state ; a third was grazing near, and seemed playful and 
lively enough when moved, though with something of the ge¬ 
neral appearance of an animal recovering from a recent ailment. 
u I was informed that the heifer had died on the day pre¬ 
vious, and I proceeded at once to an examination of her. 
There were no marks of external violence of any kind, the 
skin being in every part quite perfect, nor was there the 
slightest lesion of the muscles, or other appearance about 
any of the external tissues that was not perfectly natural. 
On laying open the cavity of the abdomen some marks of 
inflammation of the peritoneal membrane, more especially of 
that portion of it which lines the regions of the loins and the 
abdominal muscles, were apparent. The appearance of the 
first, second, and third divisions of the stomach was quite 
healthy; but the fourth division of the stomach—the aboma¬ 
sum—which is the true digestive stomach of the ruminant, was 
quite empty of food, as were also the whole of the remaining 
