Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison

Vegetable and animal poisons may be altogether destroyed by the process of digestion. This observation will explain why sometimes no poison could be found in cases of poisoning with crude opium or other vegetable solids. A French physician, M. Desruelles, has related the case of a soldier, who died six hours and a half after swallowing two drachms of solid opium, and in whose stomach nothing was found but a yellowish fluid, quite destitute of the smell of the drug.[98] Some mineral poisons, such as corrosive sublimate, lunar caustic, and hydrochlorate of tin, are also decomposed in the stomach. But they are not removed beyond the reach of chemical analysis. The decomposition is the result of a chemical, not of a vital process; and the basis of the poison may be found in the solid contents of the stomach under some other compound form. Other poisons again may be apt to elude detection by altering their form, by combining with other substances, without themselves undergoing decomposition. Thus it appears from a case related by Mertzdorff of Berlin, that, in poisoning with sulphuric acid, after the greater part of the poison is discharged by vomiting, the remainder may escape discovery by being neutralized: For, although he could not find any free acid in the contents of the stomach, he discovered 4½ grains in union with ammonia by precipitation with muriate of baryta.[99] It may be also right to mention another kind of decomposition which may render it impossible to detect a poison that has been really swallowed—namely, that arising from decay of the body. In several recent cases bodies have been disinterred and examined for poison months or even years after death. In these and similar cases it would be unreasonable to expect always to find the poison, even though it existed in the stomach immediately after death. Some poisons, such as oxalic acid, might be dissolved and then exude; others, such as the vegetable narcotics, will undergo putrefaction; and others, such as prussic acid, are partly volatilized, partly decomposed, so as to be undistinguishable in the course of a few days only. The mineral poisons, those at least which are solid, are not liable to be so dissipated or destroyed. Some authors, indeed, have said that arsenic may disappear in consequence of its uniting with hydrogen disengaged during the progress of putrefaction, and so escaping in the form of arseniuretted-hydrogen gas; and they have endeavoured to account in this way for the non-discovery of it in the bodies of the people who had been killed by arsenic, and disinterred for examination many months afterwards.[100] But the supposition is by no means probable: at least arsenic has been detected in the body fourteen months, nay, even seven years, after interment. For farther details, on this curious topic, the reader may turn to the article Arsenic. On the whole, the result of the most recent researches is that the effect of the spontaneous decay of dead animal matter in involving poisons in the general decomposition appears to be much less considerable than might be anticipated. For this most important medico-legal fact, the toxicologist is indebted to the experimental inquiries of MM. Orfila and Lesueur.[101] The poisons tried by them were—sulphuric and nitric acids, arsenic, corrosive sublimate, tartar-emetic, sugar of lead, protomuriate of tin, blue vitriol, verdigris, lunar caustic, muriate of gold, acetate of morphia, muriate of brucia, acetate of strychnia, hydrocyanic acid, opium, and cantharides. They found that after a time the acids become neutralized by the ammonia disengaged during the decay of animal matter;—that by the action of the animal matter the salts of mercury, antimony, copper, tin, gold, silver, and likewise the salts of the vegetable alkaloids, undergo chemical decomposition, in consequence of which the bases become less soluble in water, or altogether insoluble;—that acids may be detected after several years’ interment, not always, however, in the free state;—that the bases of the decomposed metallic salts may also be found after interment for several years;—that arsenic, opium, and cantharides undergo little change after a long interval of time, and are scarcely more difficult to discover in decayed, than in recent animal mixtures;—but that hydrocyanic acid disappears very soon, so as to be undistinguishable in the course of a few days.