NITROBENZENE. 
247-1 
afterwards chemically identified as pure nitrobenzene. She immediately 
spat it out, finding that it had an acrid taste, and probably did not 
swallow more than a drop. In replacing the bottle, however, she spilt 
about a tablespoonful, and allowed it to remain for some minutes ; it was 
a small room, and the vapour rapidly pervaded it, and caused illness in 
herself as well as in a fellow-servant. She had a strange feeling of 
numbness in the tongue, and in three hours and a quarter after the 
accident was seen by a medical man ; she then presented all the appear¬ 
ances of prussic acid poisoning. The eyes were bright and glassy, 
the features pale and ghastly, the lips and nails purple as if stained with 
blackberries, the skin clammy, and the pulse feeble ; but the mind was 
then clear. An emetic was administered, but she suddenly became 
unconscious ; the emetic acted, and brought up a fluid with an odour of 
nitro-benzene. The stomach-pump was also used, but the liquid obtained 
had scarcely any odour of nitro-benzene. In about eleven hours con¬ 
sciousness returned, and in about seventeen hours she partially recovered, 
but complained of flashes of light and strange colours before her eyes. 
Kecovery was not complete for weeks. In this case the small quantity 
swallowed would probably of itself have produced no symptoms, and the 
effects are to be mainly ascribed to the breathing of the vapour. 
A case is related by Stone 1 in which a young man used a blacking 
to the tops of his shoes containing nitro-benzene, and wore them at 
a dance before they were dry. Symptoms of poisoning set in, 
and he died. 
§ 247. Nitro-benzene, when added to ordinary liquids such • as 
water, tea, wine, or beer, sinks to the bottom ; there are cases recorded 
in which persons have drunk the upper portion of mixtures of this 
kind with impunity, while the lower part caused fatal illness. This 
is important; in criminal poisoning, the poisoner might drink the 
first portion of the liquid to show it was innocuous, and hand the 
remainder to his victim. 
The liquid, when swallowed, acts almost precisely in the same 
way as the vapour, and the symptoms resemble very much those pro¬ 
duced by prussic acid. The great distinction between prussic acid and 
nitro-benzene poisoning is that, in the latter, there is an interval between 
the taking of the poison and its effects. This is, indeed, one of the 
strangest phenomena of nitro-benzene poisoning, for the person, after 
taking it, may appear perfectly well for periods varying from a quarter 
of an hour to two or three hours, or even longer, and then there may be 
most alarming symptoms, followed by rapid death. Poisoning by nitro¬ 
benzene satisfies the ideal of the dramatist who requires, for the purposes 
of his plot, poisons not acting at once, but with an interval sufficiently 
prolonged to admit of lengthy rhapsodies and a complicated denouement. 
1 Journ. Am. Med. Ass., 1904. 
