ARSENICAL POISONING FROM SMELTER SMOKE. 
405 
ing in 1906 were comparatively rare, and by acute poisoning is 
meant all of those cases in which active symptoms were observed. 
In examining, however, a herd of horses in which there were 
no active symptoms and which were on apparently good pasture, 
it would be observed that a part of them were not in the condi¬ 
tion that would be expected from the quantity of food which 
they were able to obtain. The hair was lustreless, on certain 
parts of the body it was unusually long, the animals lacked spirit 
and were sometimes even dull and drowsy. Examining them 
more closely, the so-called garlicky breath was easily detected, be¬ 
ing much more evident in some than in others. It was not 
exactly the odor of garlic, but approached that odor very closely. 
When the warm carcasses were opened for examination, this 
same odor was given off by the internal organs, and especially 
by the intestinal contents, often in such concentration as to be 
nauseating to the persons who were near. Eating food in the 
restaurants of Anaconda, the eggs and the steak would some¬ 
times be so saturated with this flavor as to be unpalatable. The 
strength of this odor as given off by the breath, the internal or¬ 
gans and the intestinal contents of the animals appeared to have 
a direct relation to the quantity of smoke dust that was being in¬ 
gested, and to the acuteness of the lesions discovered at the 
autopsy. 
An alliaceous or garlicky odor has long been associated with 
arsenic and with the carcasses of animals which have been pois- 
oned by it. More than half a century ago, Dr. George B. Wood 
(19) wrote in his treatise on therapeutics: 
“On a visit to Swansea, in South Wales, some years since, I 
was assured by respectable physicians of the place that at the 
copper smelting works in the neighborhood, which load the whole 
atmosphere around them with the vapor of arsenic, so that vege¬ 
tation perishes in the near vicinity, and an alliaceous odor can 
sometimes be perceived at a considerable distance, the workmen 
themselves did not appear to suffer.” 
Peterson and Haines say (20) : “White arsenic has no odor, 
but if heated on charcoal, it is reduced to metallic arsenic, which 
