stiffness of the limbs; and immediately after death the muscles had lost their irritability.[1]
Copper has been sought for, with variable success, in the blood of animals poisoned with its salts. Drouard was unable to detect it in the blood. But this need not excite surprise, because the same physiologist could not detect it, even when he had injected it into a vein.—Lebküchner, who published a thesis at Tübingen in 1819, on the permeability of the living membranes, succeeded in discovering it. He introduced four grains of the ammoniacal sulphate into the bronchial tubes of a cat, and five minutes afterwards, when the animal was under the action of the poison, he drew some blood from the carotid artery and jugular vein; and he detected copper in the serum of the former, but not in the latter, by sulphuretted-hydrogen and hydrosulphate of ammonia.[2]—Afterwards Dr. Wibmer of Munich also succeeded in discovering it. In a dog which had taken from four to twenty grains of the neutral acetate daily for several weeks, he found the metal in the subtance of the liver, but not anywhere else. In the charcoally matter left by incinerating the liver, nitric acid formed a solution, which when neutralized gave the characteristic action of the salts of copper with sulphuretted-hydrogen, ferro-*cyanate of potash, and ammonia.[3] Fischer also found copper in the blood of a dog which in forty-three days had got gradually-increasing doses of acetate of copper, till at length twelve grains were taken daily.[4] Orfila has recently often detected copper in the liver, spleen, heart, kidneys, and lungs of animals poisoned with its salts.[5] These facts are not all invalidated by the late discovery of the presence of copper in the animal tissues of men and animals not poisoned with its preparations. For in the experiments of Wibmer and of Orfila the quantity found in cases of poisoning was much larger than in the ordinary state of things; and the poison was accumulated in particular organs, especially the liver. The absorption of copper may therefore be considered as fully substantiated; and it is equally important whether it be regarded as a physiological or medico-legal fact.
Dr. Duncan's experiment on its effect when applied to a wound shows that it may prove fatal when applied externally. Yet in small quantities, the sulphate is daily used with safety for dressing ulcers.
As to the preparations of copper which are poisonous, it is pretty certain that, like all other metals, it is not deleterious unless oxidated, and that its soluble salts are by far the most energetic. Portal, indeed, has related the case of a woman who, while taking from a half a grain to four grains of copper filings daily, was seized with symptoms of poisoning.[6] But it is probable the filings were oxidated;
- ↑ Edinburgh Med. and Surg. Journal. lvi. 110
- ↑ Utrum per viventium adhuc anim. membr. et arter. pariet. mat. ponderab. permeare queant, 13.
- ↑ Ueber die Wirkung des Kupfers auf den thierischen Organismus, in Buchner's Repertorium für die Pharmacie, xxxii. 337, 1829.
- ↑ Ibidem, lxxii. 56.
- ↑ Journal de Chimie Médicale, 1840, p. 475.
- ↑ Observations sur les effets des vapeurs méphitiques, 437.
