234 POISONS : THEIR EFFECTS AND DETECTION. [§§ 288-2()0. 
poured out simultaneously from the nose, mouth, bladder, kidneys, and 
bowels. Among women there is excessive haemorrhagia. The liver is 
found to be swollen and painful; the bodily weakness is great. Such 
cases are usually of long duration, and a person may die months after 
taking the poison from weakness, anaemia, and general cachexia. In' 
many of its phases the haemorrhagic form resembles scurvy, and, as in 
scurvy, there are spots of purpura all over the body. 
§ 288. The nervous form is less common than the two forms just 
described. From the beginning, there are strange creeping sensations 
about the limbs, followed by painful cramps, repeated faintings, and 
great somnolence. Jaundice, as usual, sets in, erythematous spots 
appear on the skin, and, about the fifth day, delirium of an acute 
character breaks out, and lockjaw and convulsions close the scene. 
The following are one or two brief abstracts of anomalous cases in 
which symptoms were either wanting, or ran a course entirely different 
from any of the three forms described :— 
A woman, aged 20, took about 3 grains of phosphorus in the form 
of rat-paste. She took the poison at 6 in the evening, behaved according 
to her wont, and sat down and wrote a letter to the King. During the 
night she vomited once, and died the next morning at 6 o’clock, 
exactly twelve hours after taking the poison. There appear to have 
been no symptoms whatever, save the single vomiting, to which may be 
added that in the course of the evening her breath had a phosphorus 
odour and was luminous. 1 
A girl swallowed a quantity of phosphorus paste, but there were no 
marked symptoms until the fifth day, on which there was sickness and 
purging. She died on the seventh day. A remarkable blueness of 
the finger-nails was observed a little before death, and was noticeable 
afterwards. 2 
§ 289. Sequelae. —In several cases in which the patients have 
recovered from phosphorus poisoning, there have been observed para¬ 
lytic affections. 3 0. Bollinger has recorded a case in which paralysis 
of the foot followed ; 4 in another, published by Bettelheim, 5 there were 
peculiar cerebral and spinal symptoms. Most of these cases are to be 
explained as disturbance or loss of function from small haemorrhages in 
the nervous substance. 
§ 290. Period at which the First Symptoms commence.— The time 
when the symptoms commence is occasionally of importance from a 
forensic point of view. Out of 28 cases in which the commencement 
of evident symptoms — i.e. pain, or vomiting, or illness — is precisely 
1 Casper’s 205th case. 2 Taylor on Poisons , p. 277. 
3 See Gallavardin, Les Paralyses phosphoriques, Paris, 1865. 
4 Deutsches Archiv f . Min. Med., Bd. vi. Hft. 1, S. 01, 1860. 
5 Wiener Med. Presse, 1868, No. 41. 
