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POISONOUS  DYES. 
POISONOUS  DYES. 
Judging  by  some  facts  which  have  recently  come  to  our  knowl- 
edge, the  poisonous  effects  of  certain  dyes,  applied  externally  or 
swallowed,  will  soon  attract  a  considerable  share  of  public  at- 
tention. We  allude  more  particularly  to  the  dyes  of  the  aniline 
series,  respecting  two  of  which,  known  abroad  as  coralline  rouge 
and  coralline  jaune,  Tardieu,  professor  of  legal  medicine  at 
Paris,  made  a  very  important  communication  to  the  Academy 
of  Sciences  on  the  1st  inst.,  of  which  the  following  is  an  abstract : 
— In  the  month  of  May,  1868,  Tardieu  was  consulted  by  a 
young  man,  twenty-three  years  of  age,  quite  healthy  and  free 
from  herpetic  rash,  who  had  been  attacked  in  both  feet  with  a 
very  acute  and  very  painful  vesicular  eruption  exactly  limited 
to  the  part  of  the  foot  covered  by  the  shoe,  and  tracing  on  the 
skin  the  perfectly  regular  form  of  the  "pump  "  which  he  wore. 
The  skin  was  violently  inflamed,  swollen,  of  a  uniform  red 
color,  covered  with  innumerable  small  vesicles,  uniting  to  form 
large  bullae  filled  with  a  sero-purulent  liquid.  The  eruption  was 
attended  by  general  malaise^  fever,  headache  and  pain  over  the 
heart.  The  seat  and  form  of  the  eruption  led  Tardieu  at  once 
to  the  conclusion  that  its  cause  was  entirely  local ;  and  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  trace  it  to  what  the  young  man  was  wearing  on 
his  foot.  He  had  only  a  few  days  previously  taken  into 
wear  some  socks  of  red  silk  of  a  very  elegant  and  fashionable 
color. 
Some  time  after  this,  a  young  man,  a  friend  of  his,  was  af- 
fected precisely  in  the  same  way  from  the  same  cause.  Later 
still,  in  the  month  of  September,  the  papers  published  a  letter, 
in  which  M.  Bidard,  professor  of  chemistry  at  Rouen,  described 
a  similar  observation  which  he  had  made  on  a  pair  of  socks  sent 
to  him  by  an  Englishman,  and  which  presented,  on  a  lilac  ground, 
circular  lines  in  silk  of  a  bright  red  tint.  The  inflammation  of 
the  skin  of  the  feet  was  limited  to  the  parts  in  contact  with  the 
red  lines.  The  lilac  color  was  given  by  the  violet  of  aniline,  the 
red  by  coralline.  Lastly,  it  is  but  a  few  days  since  the  Paris 
journals  gave  the  case  of  an  American  lady,  who,  having  worn 
stockings  of  red  silk,  found  her  legs  covered  with  blisters,  some 
