464 POISONS I THEIR EFFECTS AND DETECTION. [§§ 588, 589. 
momentarily violet. De Martiny, 1 in a few cases, found the “ yellow 
sight 55 intermit and pass into other colours, e.g. after *3 grm. there was 
first the yellow perception, then, giving the same individual -6 grm., all 
objects seemed coloured red, after half an hour orange, and then again 
yellow. In another patient the effect of the drug was to give “ green 
vision,” and in a third blue. 
Hufner and Helmholtz explain this curious effect as a direct action 
of the nervous elements of the retina, causing them to give the per¬ 
ception of violet ; they are first excited, then exhausted, and the eye is 
44 violet blind.” On the other hand, it has been suggested that santonin 
either colours the media of the eye yellow, or that there is an increase 
in the pigment of the macula lutea. The two last theories do not, how¬ 
ever, account for the intermittencv and the play of colours observed in 
a few cases. To the affections of vision are also often added hallucinations 
of taste and smell; there are headache and giddiness, and in fourteen 
out of thirty of Rose’s observations vomiting occurred. The urinary 
secretion is increased. In large and fatal doses there are shivering of 
the body, clonic, and often tetanic, convulsions ; the consciousness is 
lost, the skin is cool but covered with sweat, the pupils dilated, the 
breathing becomes stertorous, the heart’s action weak and slow, and 
death occurs in collapse—in the case observed by Grimm in fifteen hours, 
in one observed by Linstow in forty-eight hours. In those patients who 
have recovered, there have also been noticed convulsions and loss of 
consciousness. Sieveking 2 has recorded the case of a child who took 
•12 grm. (1*7 grain) santonin ; an eruption of nettle rash showed itself, 
but disappeared within an hour. 
§ 588. Post-mortem Appearances.— The post-mortem appearances 
are not characteristic. 
§ 589. Separation of Santonin from the Contents of the Stomach, 
etc. —It is specially important to analyse the faeces, for it has been 
observed that some portion goes unchanged into the intestinal canal. 
The urine, also, of persons who have taken santonin, possesses some 
important peculiarities. It becomes of a peculiar yellow-green, the 
colour appearing soon after the ingestion of the drug, and lasting even 
sixty hours. The colour may be imitated, and therefore confused with 
that which is produced by the bile acids ; a similar colour is also seen 
after persons have been taking rhubarb. Alkalies added to urine 
coloured by santonin or rhubarb strike a red colour. If the urine thus 
reddened is digested on zinc dust, santonin urine fades, rhubarb urine 
remains red. Further, if the reddened urine is precipitated by excess 
of milk of lime or baryta water and filtered, the filtrate from the urine 
reddened by rhubarb is colourless, in that reddened by santonin the 
colour remains. Santonin may be isolated by treating substances con- 
1 Gaz. den Hdpit., 1860 . 2 Brit. Med. Journ., 1871 . 
