Articles from Aids To Forensic Medicine And Toxicology
Mental Unsoundness
Incised Wounds And Those Accompanied By Solution Of Continuity
Antipyrine Antifebrin Phenacetin And Aniline
The Mineral Acids
Evidence Of Poisoning
Legitimacy
Zinc Silver Bismuth And Chromium
Vegetable Irritants
Death From Starvation
Wounds And Mechanical Injuries
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Tobacco And Lobelia
=Tobacco.=--Nicotiana tabacum owes its poisonous properties to its
alkaloid nicotine, a volatile, oily, amber-coloured liquid, with an
acrid taste and ethereal odour; soluble in water, alcohol, ether, and
chloroform. The drug has an intense depressant action on the heart and
respiratory centre.
Symptoms.--Giddiness, fainting, nausea, and vomiting, with syncope,
muscular tremors, stupor, stertorous breathing, and insensible pupil.
Death has occurred after seventeen or eighteen pipes at a sitting.
Post-Mortem Appearances.--Not uniform or characteristic. General
relaxed condition of muscles; engorgement of cerebral and pulmonary
vessels. Congestion of gastric mucous membrane.
Treatment.--Emetics, stimulants, hypodermic injection of 1/25 grain of
strychnine. Warmth to the surface by hot bottles, hot blankets.
Method of Extraction from the Stomach.--Digest the contents of the
stomach in cold distilled water and very dilute sulphuric acid;
strain, filter, and press residue. Evaporate the filtrate to half its
bulk, digest with alcohol, and evaporate alcohol off in a water-bath.
Dissolve residue (sulphate of nicotine) in water, and make solution
alkaline with potash; then shake with ether in a test-tube. Remove ether
and allow it slowly to evaporate. Test resulting alkaloid.
Tests.--No change of colour with the mineral acids. White deposit with
corrosive sublimate. Sulphuric acid and bichromate of potassium give a
green colour, oxide of chromium. Precipitate with bichloride of platinum
and with carbazotic acid.
=Lobelia Inflata= (Indian Tobacco).--Much used in America by the
Coffenite practitioners, and a valuable remedy for asthma.
Symptoms.--Nausea, vomiting, giddiness, cold sweats, prostration.
Headache, giddiness, tremors, insensibility, and convulsions.
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