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374  CASE  OF  POISONING  BY  VERATRUM  VIRIDE. 
cess  specially  applicable  as  a  lecture  experiment.  When  the  mix- 
ture has  been  heated  to  70°  or  80°  the  lamp  may  in  general  be 
removed,  as  the  heat  of  the  fluid  is  then  sufficient  to  carry  on  the 
reaction  to  the  end. 
2.  The  whole  of  the  oxygen  is  obtained  from  the  material, 
while  only  a  part  is  procured  by  heating  peroxide  of  manganese, 
and 
3.  The  process  has  the  advantage  of  greater  cheapness 
than  that  with  chlorate  of  potash  (either  with  or  without  man- 
ganese). 
It  is  necessary  to  employ  a  clear  solution  of  chloride  of  lime, 
as  a  thick  or  murky  solution  will  froth  over.  The  best  way  of 
making  a  clear  and  strong  solution  is  by  first  extracting  one  por- 
tion of  chloride  of  lime  with  water,  decanting  the  clear  liquor,  and 
then  make  use  of  that  to  exhaust  another  portion  of  the  chloride. 
In  this  way  it  is  easy  to  get  a  liquor  which  will  evolve  from  twenty- 
five  to  thirty  times  its  volume  of  oxygen.  On  the  small  scale  it 
is  best  to  employ  a  capacious  flask,  which  may  be  about  seven- 
eighths  filled  with  the  solution.  On  a  large  scale  for  technical 
purposes  a  sort  of  steam  boiler  might  be  used,  and  the  oxygen  so 
obtained  under  pressure,  and  capable  of  being  employed  as  a 
blast. 
In  a  note  the  author  suggests  that  a  very  pretty  experiment 
may  be  made  to  show  the  displacement  of  oxygen  by  chlorine,  by 
passing  the  latter  gas  into  a  mixture  of  solution  of  caustic  soda 
with  some  peroxide  of  cobalt.  The  chlorine  could  be  passed  in 
on  one  side,  and  oxygen  collected  at  the  other. — Chem.  News, 
Lond.,  June  2,  1865,  from  Annalen  der  Qhemie  und  Pharmacie, 
April,  1865,  p.  64. 
CASE  OF  POISONING  BY  YERATRUM  YIRIDE. 
[Read  before  the  Middlesex  East  District  Medical  Society,  and  communicated, 
by  the  Secretary,  for  the  Boston  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal.] 
By  J.  C.  Harris,  M.  D.,  of  West  Cambridge. 
J.  C,  aged  1  year  and  6  months,  was  attacked  with  pneumo- 
nia, from  which  he  made  a  good  recovery,  the  chief  remedy  in 
the  active  stage  being  veratrum  viride — the  dose  being  four  drops 
of  the  tincture,  repeated  every  four  hours.    When  the  child 
