Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison

lasts long_, sometimes more than a day. So far as I have been able to ascertain (though on this point it must be confessed authors are singularly silent), it never proves fatal in a shorter time than several hours, unless there have been many previous fits; and even then it rarely proves fatal more rapidly. I have met with a case which, after many previous fits, proved fatal in little more than an hour.[1649] In an instance mentioned by Mr. Clifton of irregularly recurring epilepsy, the patient after being exempt for four months was attacked twice a day for four days, and during an interval of ease fell down in the street and died. General congestion and excessive softening of the brain were found.[1650] I have met with a case very like this, where death was owing to enormous extravasation of blood into the ventricles. So rapid a termination never occurs except after several paroxysms; and probably never without well-marked appearances in the dead body. The variety of poisoning with which epilepsy is most apt to be confounded, poisoning with hydrocyanic acid, has hitherto always proved fatal within three-quarters of an hour, and can probably never prove fatal so late as a whole hour after the symptoms begin, unless the dose has been small and given repeatedly. Poisoning with the gas of privies,—another variety, which sometimes imitates precisely a fit of epilepsy, appears not to prove fatal in its convulsive form later than two hours after the exposure.