the bulb, died with similar symptoms. One of them, who took eighteen ounces, and died in two days, presented the leading symptoms of malignant cholera, namely, frequent vomiting, copious rice-water stools, cramps of the abdominal muscles and flexion of the extremities, coldness of the skin, tongue, and breath, blueness of the nails, dull, sunken eyes, contracted pupils, and collapse of the features. The two others had at first similar symptoms, which passed into those of chronic dysentery, and proved fatal in a few weeks.[1]—M. Caffe has related the case of a young lady who destroyed herself by taking five ounces of the wine containing the active matter of rather more than the fourth part of one bulb. She was soon seized with acute pain in the stomach, then with frequent vomiting, general coldness and paleness, a sense of tightness in the chest and oppression of the breathing, a slow thready pulse, and extreme prostration,—and subsequently with severe and constant cramps in the soles of the feet. In eleven hours she had less frequent efforts to vomit, but was excessively exhausted; in twenty hours the pulse was imperceptible; and in two hours more she died. There was no suppression of urine, no purging, no diminution of sensibility, delirium, convulsions, or change in the state of the pupils.[2] About a twelvemonth afterwards the sister of this patient put an end to herself with the same preparation, of which she took the same quantity; and she died, with precisely the same symptoms, in twenty-eight hours.[3] M. Ollivier met with two cases of death within twenty-four hours, in consequence of a tincture being taken which contained the active part of forty-eight grains of the dry bulb; and a third case of death in three days caused by three doses of a watery decoction made each time with 46 grains of the bruised bulb collected in July. Severe purging and prostration followed each dose. There was no symptom of any affection of the brain.[4]—Mr. Henderson describes a case occasioned by an ounce of the tincture. No injury accrued for three hours. The patient then had gnawing pain in the stomach followed by vomiting, and then by purging, at first bilious, afterwards watery, and attended with numbness in the feet, and subsequently a sense of prickling. In the course of the second day there was intense gnawing pain in all the joints of the extremities, profuse acid sweating, tightness in the head, and pain in the hindhead and nape of the neck. Blood-letting, laxatives, and hyoscyamus were employed with success; but the case seems very nearly to have proved fatal.[5]
The seeds produce similar effects. Bernt has noticed the cases of two children who were poisoned by a handful of colchicum seeds, and who died in a day, affected with violent vomiting and purging.[6] Mr. Fereday of Dudley relates a carefully detailed case of a man who died in forty-seven hours after swallowing by mistake two
