COPPER. All the preparations of copper are poisonous. The most common are the acetate, the sulphate, the ni trate, the muriate, the ammoniuret, as chemical poisons. In domestic use, those of ordinary occurrence are solu tions of the metal in wine or vinegar, and its combinations with oily matters.
In many countries, and particularly in France, where copper vessels are much used in cooking, this poison is very frequently called into action, and it is therefore im portant that it should be well known. These poisons, however, are always taken inadvertently, never given with design to kill. There is no doubt that milk also acts in copper vessels in particular cases, and produces poisonous effects. A case is related by Dr. Darwin, where the mis tress of a dairy farm suffered, merely from a custom of frequently tasting the cream at the edges of the milk pans. Verdigris is one of the most active of these poisonous preparations.
The ordinary symptoms are an acrid metallic taste, with dryness of the mouth and tongue and constriction of the throat. Spitting, nausea, with vomiting, or vain ef forts to vomit, follow. There are pains in the stomach anti bowels, alvme dejections, sometimes black or bloody, with tenesmus, and the abdomen is inflated. The pulse is small and irregular, and generally hard and frequent ; with debility, burning thirst, difficulty of breathing, cold swcats. dysuria, headach, vertigo, cramps, convulsions, and death. These do not, however, often occur in the sante person ; and the most common ones are vomiting, with colic pains. Gangrene sometimes takes place, and is easily known by its common symptoms.
The appearances, after death, are an inflamed or gan grenous state of the alimentary canal, and sometimes they are corroded into holes, as happens with arsenic.
Treatment of the Patient. The alkalies and alkaline sulphurets are not antidotes to copper, because, though they decompose the salts, they leave the oxides, which are equally destructive. Nor has the infusion of galls been of any use. Sugar has very unexpectedly been found
an antidote, as it renders the soluble acetates insoluble, and comparatively innocent.
The best practice, therefore, if sugar can be procured, is to give it in large quantities dissolved in water, by which means vomiting is at the same time encouraged. If that is not at hand, warm water, or broth, or any vegetable drink, must be given, and that in large quantities. It is unsafe to use emetics, and they should only be adopted in case it is impossible to excite vomiting in any other way. If, however, the poison has been so long taken that vo miting has ceased, and there are pains in the abdomen from its having passed into the intestines, vomiting must bc avoided, and we must have recourse to emollient injections, and to the usual antiphlogistic remedies. When spasms and convulsions are present, anodynes and antispasmodics are proper.
This treatment applies alike to all the other preparations of copper.
TIN. Although this metal, under any form, is never given as a poison designedly, yet, being used in medicine and in many manufactures, it is necessary to be aware of its effects. The muriates and the oxides are the only preparations likely to become poisons in these ways. The former are by far the most active.
The symptoms do not differ much from those produced by the other metallic poisons ; being, namely, a metallic taste, constrictions and thirst, vomiting, pains, diarrhoea, an oppressed pulse, convulsions, and palsy. After death, the same effects have been observed in the alimentary canal as are produced by mercury.
Treatment of the patient. Milk has been found useful in diminishing the effects of this'poison, and should there fore be given in large quantities; and, in defect of it, warm water and mucilaginous decoctions. The poison will thus be diluted and discharged, and the remainder of the prac tice resembles that described before.
The action of the oxide resembles that of the -muriate. but it requires considerable doses.