ZINC. 
§ 905-] 
707 
the patient sank from exhaustion. The stomach was constricted at 
the pyloric end, so that it would scarcely admit a quill. 
In Guy’s Hospital there is a good preparation, 1799 35 , from the case 
of S. R., aged 22. She took a tablespoonful of Burnett’s fluid, and died 
in about fourteen weeks. There were at first violent vomiting and 
purging, but she suffered little pain, and in a day or twa recovered 
sufficiently to move about the house ; but the vomiting after food con¬ 
tinued, everything being ejected about five minutes after swallowing. 
Before death she suffered from pneumonia. The stomach is seen to be 
much contracted—5 inches in length ; it is ulcerated both near the 
pylorus and near the gullet; at the latter part there is a pouch-like 
portion of the mucous membrane of the stomach adherent to the spleen, 
which communicates by a perforation with an abscess formed and 
bounded by the stomach, diaphragm, and spleen ; it contained 3 ozs. 
of dirty-looking pus. At the pylorus, in the centre, there is a second per¬ 
foration, but extravasation of the contents is prevented by the adherent 
omentum and transverse colon. The muscular coats are thickened. 
§ 905. Detection of Zinc in Organic Liquids or Solids. —In cases 
where the poison has been expelled from the stomach by vomiting, the 
muscles and bones would appear to be the best tissues to examine chemi¬ 
cally ; for Matzkewitsch investigated very carefully a dog poisoned by 
100 parts of zinc, subcutaneously injected in the form of acetate, and 
found it distributed over the several organs of the body in the following 
ratios :—Muscles, 60*5 ; bones, 24-41 ; stomach and intestines, 4-63 ; 
skin, 3-70 ; place of injection, 2-19 ; liver, 1-75 ; lungs and heaxt, 1-68 ; 
kidneys, bladder, and urine, 1-14. 
Finely divided organic solids should be partially oxidised by nitric 
acid and then charred ; the charred mass is fused in a porcelain basin 
with sodium carbonate and potassic nitrate, and the ash dissolved in 
nitric acid. The first group of metals is thrown out by sulphuretted 
hydrogen, the iron and aluminium by ammonia ; a small excess of acetic 
acid is added to the filtrate, and the zinc precipitated as sulphide by 
hydric sulphide ; on the routine examination for metals the solution 
will have been treated with hydrochloric acid, and already tested for 
arsenic, antimony, lead, etc., and filtered from any precipitate. In such 
a case the hydrochloric acid must first be replaced by acetic, which is 
effected by adding a slight excess of sodic acetate ; the right quantity 
of the latter is easily known if the hydrochloric acid originally added 
was carefully measured, and its specific gravity ascertained—3-72 of 
crystallised sodic acetate saturating one of HC1. In any of the above 
cases, should a white, dirty white, or lightish-coloured precipitate (which 
is not sulphur) be thrown down, zinc may be suspected ; it will, however, 
be absolutely necessary to identify the sulphide, for there are many 
sources of error. The most satisfactory of all identifications is the 
