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I Specimen Pag^e 
14 • GENERAL TOXICOLOGY. 
act fatally, without producing gross anatomical changes. Between the 
two we place the group of blood-poisons. With these, the blood only 
is found to have changed, or at least ^primarily so, and the changes 
within the other organs are brought about in consequence. 
V.—The Diagnosis of Poisoning. 
At times the recognition of a case of poisoning is compara¬ 
tively an easy matter, while again, it may be very difficult, or 
even impossible. We can readily understand this when we 
consider the large number of poisons, how different their mode 
of action, and how the symptoms of one and the same poison 
may vary, according to the size of the dose and the form of 
administration. This fact becomes all the more apparent 
when we remember that the various symptoms (because they 
are only symptoms) may appear similarly in other diseased 
conditions. The following are, in general, the signs which are 
of importance in making a diagnosis : 
1. The Symptoms. —For a great many acute cases, it is 
true, as the old saying has it, that poisoning, caused by the 
introduction of a poison from without, is probable when 
marked and violent symptoms suddenly appear in an individual 
previously perfectly healthy. But, on the one hand, people 
who have already been ailing may become poisoned; and, on 
the other hand, this statement excludes the frequent cases of 
chronic poisoning. Then, again, death can be caused suddenly 
by such disease as cholera, rupture of the heart, apoplexy, 
embolism, intestinal obstruction, peritonitis due to perforation 
I of the intestine, uraemia. The suspicious symptoms become 
[ . more conclusive when they appear shortly after the partaking 
of any food, and especially when they appear simultaneously 
, in several persons, and even in domestic animals. 
' The symptoms may affect all the organs; the most impor¬ 
tant are vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions, paralyses, cyanosis, 
dyspnoea and disturbance of the pulse. The following table 
seems to be of practical value in making a diagnosis : 
.. TABLE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE ACTION OF 
THE MORE COMMON POISONS. 
NO. 
IN THE PEESENCE OP THE 
FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS : 
WE SHOULD FIRST THINK OF: 
1 
Death within a few 
1 moments 
Hydrocyanic acid, potassium cyanid, 
carbon di-oxid, carbolic acid 
