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Abstract
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But a few years ago, no antidote for the poisonous action of strychnia was known, the treatment being purely remedial, and in no sense, chemical. The spasms or jerks were often attempted to be controlled by what we usually style, anti spasmodics, and such articles were passed into the stomach as are called demulcents, emollients and the like. As a mattep of course, the patients generally died, after a brief period of terrible suffering.
In later years, the use of this poison has very greatly in creased, partly because of the smallness of the dose, and partly because of the easy methods of concealing its administration. The multiplication of cases, however, has led to a more per fect understanding of its action, and the means of controlling its fatal tendency have had a corresponding increase, so that now we have abundant facilities for meeting the worst cases.
It not unfrequently happens that an individual who has at tempted self-destruction by this agency, very soon after the poisonous symptoms develope themselves, announce the real ity of his condition, so that the poison being certainly known, we have no difficulty in combatting it. In other cases, no such information can be had, and then we must rely on those marked, prominent signs present, which no practiced eye can ever mistake. The tetanic jerks or spasms speaking for them selves, need no interpreter. The physician who is rightly in formed understands all this, and decides on instant and vigor ous action. He empties the stomach at once, by repeated use of the pump, or by means of a prompt emetic, as of ten grains of sulphate of zinc or sulphate of copper, every ten minutes, until the organ is thoroughly evacuated.
As to the query, "how much strychnia will kill an adult," no fixed answer can be given. Very much depends on the fullness or emptiness of the stomach at the time of swallowing the dose, not a little likewise is due to the previous habits of the patient, the morbid or healthful state of the system, &c. But when a physician is at the bedside of one who is actually under the influence of the poison, after evacuating the stomach...
Language: en |