Toxic substance

“ This toxic action of food salts is decreased when they are mixed together, so that the addition of one toxic food solution to another produces a mixture which is less toxic than either of its constituents. ”

“ Many of these effects are dependent upon the action of poisons retained in the body owing to the deficient action of the kidneys. It is also probable that abnormal substances having a toxic action are produced as a result of a perverted metabolism. ”

“ Plainly, if it is possible to obtain this antitoxine in quantity and then inoculate it into the body when the toxic poisons are present, we have a means for decidedly assisting the body in its efforts to drive off the parasites. ”

“ Incomplete experimental evidence suggests that the activity of the toxic agent may be heightened by a possible lytic action of the blood serum of a sensitive individual, and that the sensitive serum itself may contain the toxic agent in solution. ”

“ There are but few poisons which destroy life in a few minutes. Omitting the strong mineral acids, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, with the irrespirable gases,—Prussic acid, the cyanides, oxalic acid, and occasionally strychnine, are the chief poisons coming under this head.
B. Irritant Poisons (symptoms mainly pain, vomiting, and purging) .
Arsenic, antimony, phosphorus, cantharides, savin, ergot, digitalis, colchicum, zinc, mercury, lead, copper, silver, iron, baryta, chrome, yew, laburnum, and putrid animal substances. ”

“ From the foregoing it is only natural to expect that different toxic products which are introduced into the organism from without, either in the food or in the drink, or which result from the decomposition of meat and alcohol and other stimulants, will also, for the most part, be eliminated by the kidneys, especially with a dilatory performance of the other disintoxicating organs. ”

“ Rather be a living beggar than a dead millionaire!
In the succeeding chapters we will enter fully into detail on all the subjects we have touched upon in these general remarks. We will describe the functions by which the body rids itself of toxic products, and the means by which these functions may be improved. At the same time we shall set forth the rational hygiene of the organs that cause the elimination of poisons either taken through food or introduced from without ”

“ Some individuals are so toxic that the waste products released during a fast are too strong, too concentrated or too poisonous for the organs of elimination to handle safely, or to be handled within the willingness of the faster to tolerate the discomforts that toxic releases generate. ”

“ It is a misdemeanour to administer any poison, or destructive or noxious thing, merely to aggrieve, injure, or annoy an individual. For a working definition we may state that a poison is a substance which, when introduced into or applied to the body, is capable of injuring health or destroying life. A poison may therefore be swallowed, applied to the skin, injected into the tissues, or introduced into any orifice of the body. ”

“ Tolerance increases with increasing doses, and in a comparatively short space of time poisonous doses are taken with impunity as far as immediate danger to life is concerned. The toxic effects of the poison are shown in characteristic perversion of the functions of the nervous system and of the mind. ”

“ An examination of the various experimental methods shows that while no one of them is ideal, yet each of them has a definite contribution to make to the investigation of toxic and stimulant substances. Each method aids in the elucidation of the problem from a different standpoint, and the combination of the results obtained gives one a clearer picture of the truth than could be obtained by one method alone. ”

“ In recent times the employment of chemical preservatives has acquired a new aspect through the increasing tendency of manufacturers to add to food products antiseptic chemicals in wide variety and of dubious physiological effect.
It is not so easy and simple as it might appear to declare that no substance that is poisonous shall be added to food. The scientific conception of a poison is one involving the amount as well as the kind of substance. Common salt itself is poisonous in large doses, but, as everyone knows, small amounts are not only not injurious, but absolutely necessary to health. ”

“ Chemical agents can be physically and chemically absorbed into food. In addition to the toxic effect, they often adversely affect taste, smell, and the appearance of the food. However, chemical agents can cause the food to become very toxic without causing any other changes in the food. Table J-4 shows the effects of a number of chemical agents on food. Since food can be contaminated without any outward change in appearance, the possibility of contamination must be assumed in a chemical agent environment. Treat the food with the same precautions as established for known contaminated items. ”

“ With regard to the commoner poisons, such as arsenic, corrosive sublimate, the mineral acids, oxalic acid, nux-vomica, and the like, it is a good general rule, that the symptoms, if violent from the beginning, must have begun soon after food, drink, or medicine has been taken. ”

“ At some future time, with a more intimate knowledge of the way in which each poison acts upon the various forms of animal and vegetable life, it may be possible to give a truly scientific and philosophical classification of poisons—one based neither upon symptoms, upon local effects, nor upon chemical structure, but upon a collation and comparison of all the properties of a poison, whether chemical, physical, or physiological. ”

“ The poison absorbed in the body can act unchanged from the place where it is stored. A number of poisons, however, undergo in the organism chemical change through which the action of the poison is partly lessened, rarely increased. ”

“ Another point of difficulty is the great individual variation in the susceptibility of animals. This is probably greater than when the poison is administered subcutaneously or intravenously. It necessitates the use of a large number of animals in making a determination of the toxicity of a gas. Again, the toxicity for different species may vary, and as the ultimate aim is a knowledge of the toxicity for man, a great many different species must be used. If the toxicity is widely different for different animal species, it is hard to arrive at a definite conclusion as to the toxicity for man. ”

“ Under the head of each poison an account will be given hereafter of the evidence in support of the discovery of it by chemical analysis in the blood, textures, and excretions. In the present place it is sufficient to state in general terms that the evidence is quite satisfactory in the instances of iodine, sal-ammoniac, oxalic acid, nitre, sulphuret of potassium, arsenic, mercury, copper, antimony, tin, silver, zinc, bismuth, lead, hydrocyanic acid, cyanide of potassium, carbazotic acid, sulphuretted-hydrogen, camphor, and alcohol. ”

“ The strongest effect which a poison is able to produce is the destruction of the life functions of the organism, the fatal effect. This fatal dose, however, can only be determined relatively to the qualities of the organism in question. ”

“ Nature has so combined them that they are not a danger or an evil,-that is, so long as they are left in the chemical connection in which nature has organized them; but when they are extracted by the artificial processes of chemistry they become a poison. You can extract poison from grain or its products and when it is extracted it is a deadly poison; but if you leave that poison as nature embodied it in the original substances, it is not a dangerous poison or an active agency of poison at all. ”

“ He found that the blood, urine, and lungs of animals poisoned with arsenic acted as a poison on small birds, such as sparrows, whether the parts were taken from the body while the animal was alive, or after death; but that alcohol, cherry-laurel water, corrosive sublimate, sulphate of copper, tartar-emetic, acetate of lead, nitrate of silver, trisnitrate of bismuth, chloride of tin, sulphate of zinc, laudanum, acetate of morphia, strychnia, and cantharides, had no such effect. ”

“ And, finally, when the poison has been supplied in too small a quantity to destroy life, eschars are produced, that is, certain superficial portions of the tissues are destroyed, which are afterward thrown off by the reparative process taking place in the healthy parts.
These three sets of instances admit of being treated according to the Method of Agreement. In all of them the metallic compounds are brought into contact with the substances which compose the human or animal body; and the instances do not seem to agree in any other circumstance. ”

“ It is known that while certain chemicals may be taken in substantial quantities for a month or a year without producing demonstrably injurious effects, nevertheless the continued use of the same substances, even in smaller quantities, will eventually undermine the health. ”

“ Before quitting the subject, however, I have to add, that there is another purpose, besides procuring direct evidence, to which experiments with animals may be applied with great propriety;—namely, the settling disputed questions regarding the physiological and pathological properties of a particular poison. The science of toxicology is not yet by any means so perfect, but in particular cases topics may arise, which have not hitherto been investigated, and which it may be necessary to determine by experiment. ”

“ However brief and imperfect the foregoing historical sketch of the part that poison has played may be, it is useful in showing the absolute necessity of a toxicological science—a science embracing many branches of knowledge. ”

“ The whole farrago of quack or patent medicines is destructive of health and life, whether cordial or vegetable balsams, tinctures, syrups, or elixirs,—pectoral or antiscorbutic drops, bile or antibilious pills, tonic or digestive wines, balms of gilead, guestonian embrocations, Leake’s pillula salutaria, and a thousand other poisonous and life-destroying trash. ”

“ If there is the least doubt about the substance, do not assume the least risk, but destroy it at once. Many times the unknown contents of some bottle or package has been carelessly taken and found to be poison.
Careless and stupid people often take, by mistake, with serious, and often fatal, results, poisonous doses of carbolic acid, bed-bug poison, horse-liniment, oxalic acid, and other poisons. A safe rule is to keep all bottles and boxes containing poisonous substances securely bottled or packed, and carefully labeled with the word POISON plainly written in large letters across the label. ”

“ At the same time it must be admitted, that in all these trades there exists a more obvious and ready channel for the introduction of the poison; because the workmen are either exposed to breathe its fumes, or are apt to transfer its particles from the fingers into the stomach with their food.—Of all exposures none is more rapid and certain than breathing the vapours or dust of the preparations of lead. But for that very reason workmen who are so exposed seldom suffer ”

“ It is only when they find their proper food, decaying matter, that they begin to multiply, and in that act they secret a poison, toxin, which is absorbed, and, entering the circulation, causes in the individual a special class of symptoms peculiar to that toxin, or poison. ”

“ There is a class of intoxication diseases which depend on toxins generated by germs whose habitat is the soil, water, or other external media, and whose germs do not enter the human body as a necessary feature in their life-histories, although their toxins may. ”

“ Age, idiosyncrasy, tolerance, and disease, all exert modifying influences on the action of a poison. The form in which the poison is swallowed and the quantity also determine its action. In the gaseous form, poisons act most rapidly and fatally. When in solution and injected hypodermically, they also act very rapidly. ”

“ Its active principle, emeta, is a powerful poison. Two grains of the pure alkaloid will kill a dog; and the symptoms are frequent vomiting, followed by sopor and coma, and death in fifteen or twenty-four hours. In the dead body the lungs and stomach are found inflamed. ”

“ It was for that reason that I was enabled to administer an antidote without making an exact diagnosis. Now, as you are well aware, toxicology is a very strange study. Even common table-salt is a poison, and has caused death. ”

“ Secondly, in close connection with the uncleanliness of animal food we may consider its unwholesomeness. These waste products of the tissues to which I have referred are poisonous to us, and they usually take the form of uric acid. We have already our own waste-tissues, our own uric acid, to dispose of, and when we add to this poison of our own production the poisons produced by the animals we eat, we increase enormously the labours of our kidneys and digestive organs. ”

“ Equally true is it that the man or woman who makes use of such drugs as alcohol, opium, chloral, and such like, in an intemperate manner, contains these poisons in solution in the blood, circulating to every part of the body, and thus bathing and profoundly influencing the germ-cells. In consequence of this fact an acquired and habitual intemperance will seldom fail to leave its impress upon one or more of the offspring, either like the original vice or one very closely allied to it. ”

“ For it is, on the other hand, well ascertained, that many, indeed most of the active poisons whose effects have been examined by a connected train of experiments, produce nearly the same effects on all animals whatever from the highest to the lowest in the scale of perfection. It has been fully proved, that arsenic, copper, mercury, the mineral acids, opium, strychnia, conia, white hellebore, hydrocyanic acid, cyanogen gas, sulphuretted hydrogen, and many others, produce nearly the same effects on man, quadrupeds, birds, amphibious animals, and even on fishes and insects. ”