bloody diarrhœa.[1] The peach-blossom would therefore appear to be rather a narcotico-acrid, than a narcotic.—Peach-leaves are represented to have produced even purely irritant effects. A man, who took a decoction of a handful boiled in a quart of water down to a third,—when of course no hydrocyanic acid could remain,—was attacked with tightness in the chest, a sense of suffocation, violent colic, pain in the stomach and frequent desire to vomit, followed by a hard pulse, restlessness, and flushing of the face. But he recovered slowly under the use of fomentations and opiates.[2]
The bark of the Prunus padus, or cluster-cherry, a native of this country, owes its poisonous qualities to the same substance as the preceding plants. Heumann found that the distilled water obtained from two ounces of bark in March contains two grains of acid, two ounces of developed leaves half a grain, and two ounces of the seed a trifle less.[3] Its distilled water has the odour of bitter almonds, contains the same essential oil with that of the bitter almond, and yields more hydrocyanic acid than the cherry-laurel water.[4] The oil, according to Schrader, contains 9·25[5] per cent. of hydrocyanic acid, according to Göppert only 5·5 per cent.[6] Bremer, who has examined this plant with great care, found that both the distilled water and the essential oil kill mice when put into the mouth, eye, nose, ear, anus, or a wound; and that half an ounce of the water killed a dog in twelve minutes.[7] The fruit is also poisonous. It has a nauseous taste, but communicates a pleasant flavour to spirituous liquors. The kernels yield by expression a transparent, fixed oil, concrete at 41° F., which contains a small quantity of the essential oil; and the cake which is left yields so much of the latter, that, as we are informed by M. Chancel of Briançon, a handful has proved fatal to cows in a short time.[8] In these kernels, as in the bitter almond, the essential oil does not exist ready formed, but is developed only in consequence of the contact of water; and hence, if the fixed oil by expression contains a little of it, as Chancel says, this must arise from the kernels having been moist when squeezed.
The Sorbus aucuparia, mountain-ash, or Rowan-tree as it is called in Scotland, has been lately added to the list of plants which abound in the same poisonous principle. M. Grassmann of St Petersburgh has found that many parts of this tree, such as the flowers and the bark of the trunk and branches, contain more or less of the peculiar essential oil; and that the root in particular contains so much in the month of May as to smell strongly of it when broken across, and to yield a distilled water which holds fully as much hydrocyanic acid as that procured from an equal weight of cherry-laurel leaves.[9]
- ↑ Recherches, &c. p. 74.
- ↑ Journal de Chimie Médicale, 1837, 99.
- ↑ Repertorium für die Pharmacie, lxxv. 220.
- ↑ Bremer, Bermerkungen und Erfahrungen über die Wirksamkeit des Trauben-Kirschbaums.—Archiv für Medizinische Erfahrung, 1812, i. 41.
- ↑ Buchner's, Repertorium, xii. 130.
- ↑ Rust's Magazin, xxxii. 500.
- ↑ Bemerkungen, &c. Horn's Archiv, 1812, i. 71.
- ↑ Journal de Pharmacie, iii. 275.
- ↑ Buchner's Repertorium für die Pharmacie, xxvii. 238.
