Treatise on Poisons by Sir Robert Christison
CHAPTER XI.
1480 words | Chapter 86
OF POISONING WITH AMMONIA AND ITS SALTS.
The second group of the order of alkaline poisons, including ammonia
with its salts, and the sulphuret of potass, have a double action on the
system, analogous to that possessed by many metallic poisons. They are
powerful irritants; but they produce besides, through the medium of the
blood, a disorder of some part of the nervous system; and their remote
is sometimes more dangerous than their local action. The nervous
affection produced by ammonia and the sulphuret of potass closely
resembles tetanus, and therefore depends probably on irritation of the
spinal column.
_Of the Chemical tests for the Ammoniacal Salts._—Ammonia is when pure a
gaseous body; but as commonly seen, it exists in solution in water,
which dissolves it in large quantity. The solution has the usual effects
of alkalis on vegetable colours, with the difference, however,—that the
changes of colour are not permanent under the action of heat. It forms a
yellow precipitate, as potass does, with chloride of platinum. It may at
once be distinguished from other fluids by its peculiar pungent odour,
which is possessed by no other substance except its carbonate.
Various _carbonates_ are known in chemistry, but the only one known in
commerce or met with in the shops is the sesqui-carbonate
(subcarbonate—smelling salt—volatile salt—hartshorn). It is solid,
white, fibrous, and has the same odour as pure ammonia. Its solution
differs little in physical properties from the pure liquid ammonia; but,
unlike it, is precipitated by the salts of lime.
The _hydrochlorate_ (muriate of ammonia—sal-ammoniac)—is known by its
solid, white, crystalline appearance; its ductility; its volatility; and
by the effect of caustic potass and nitrate of silver, the former of
which disengages an ammoniacal odour, while the latter causes in a
solution of the salt a white precipitate, the chloride of silver.
_Of the action of the Ammoniacal Salts, and their effects on man._—To
determine the action of ammonia on the animal system, Professor Orfila
injected sixty grains of the pure solution into the jugular vein of a
dog. Immediately the whole legs were spasmodically extended; at times
convulsions occurred; and in ten minutes it died. The chest being laid
open instantly, coagulated florid blood was seen in the left ventricle,
and black fluid blood in the right ventricle of the heart. No unusual
appearance was discernible any where else except complete exhaustion of
muscular irritability.[468] The experiments of Mr. Blake also show that
ammonia introduced in large doses into the veins acts by suddenly
extinguishing the irritability of the heart. Small doses first lower
arterial pressure from debility of the heart’s action, and then increase
it by obstructing the systemic capillaries. When injected into the aorta
from the axillary artery, it causes great increase of arterial pressure,
owing to the latter cause; and then arrests the heart, while the
respiration goes on. Four seconds are sufficient for the ammonia to pass
from the jugular vein into the heart, so as to be discovered there by
muriatic acid causing white fumes.[469] Half a drachm of a strong
solution, introduced by Orfila into the stomach of a dog and secured by
a ligature on the gullet, caused at first much agitation. But in five
minutes the animal became still and soporose; after five hours it
continued able to walk; in twenty hours it was found quite comatose; and
death ensued in four hours more. The only morbid appearance was slight
mottled redness of the villous coat of the stomach. A third dog, to
which two drachms and a half of the common carbonate were given in fine
powder, died in twelve minutes. First it vomited; next it became
slightly convulsed; and the convulsions gradually increased in strength
and frequency till the whole body was agitated by dreadful spasms; then
the limbs became rigid, the body and head were bent backwards, and in
this state it expired, apparently suffocated in a fit of tetanus.[470]
Several cases of poisoning with ammonia or its carbonate have occurred
in the human subject. Plenck has noticed shortly a case which proved
fatal in four minutes, and which was caused by a little bottleful of
ammonia having been poured into the mouth of a man who had been bitten
by a mad-dog.[471] The symptoms are not mentioned, but it is probable,
from the rapidity of the poisoning, that a nervous affection must have
been induced. More generally, however, the effects are simply irritant;
and the seat of the irritation will vary with the mode in which the
poison is given. If it is swallowed, the stomach and intestines will
suffer; if it is imprudently inhaled in too great quantity, inflammation
of the lining membrane of the nostrils and air-passages will ensue.
Huxham has related a very interesting example of the former affection,
as it occurred in a young man, who had acquired a strange habit of
chewing the solid carbonate of the shops. He was seized with great
hemorrhage from the nose, gums, and intestines; his teeth dropt out;
wasting and hectic fever ensued; and, although he was at length
prevailed on to abandon his pernicious habit, he died of extreme
exhaustion, after lingering several months.[472] But the most frequent
cases of poisoning with ammonia have arisen from its being inhaled, and
thus exciting bronchial inflammation. An instructive instance of the
kind has been related by M. Nysten. A medical man, liable to epilepsy,
was found in a fit by his servant, who ignorantly tried to rouse him by
holding assiduously to his nostrils a handkerchief dipped in ammonia. In
this way about two drachms appear to have been consumed. On recovering
his senses, the gentleman complained of burning pain from the mouth
downwards to the stomach, great difficulty in swallowing, difficult
breathing, hard cough, and copious expectoration, profuse mucous
discharge from the nostrils, and excoriation of the tongue. The
bronchitis increased steadily, and carried him off in the course of the
third day, without convulsions or any mental disorder having
supervened.[473] A case precisely similar is related in the Edinburgh
Medical and Surgical Journal. A lad, while convalescent from an attack
of fever, was seized with epilepsy, for which his attendant applied
ammonia under his nose “with such unwearied, but destructive
benevolence, that suffocation had almost resulted. As it was, dyspnœa
with severe pain of the throat and breast, immediately succeeded; and
death took place forty-eight hours afterwards.”[474] A third instance
has been recorded of analogous effects produced by the incautious use of
ammonia as an antidote for prussic acid. The patient had all the
symptoms of a violent bronchitis, accompanied with redness and scattered
ulceration of the mouth and throat; but he recovered in thirteen
days.[475] A fourth case, similar to the preceding, has been related by
M. Souchard of Batignolles. A druggist, who inhaled while asleep the
fumes of ammonia from a broken carboy, awoke in three-quarters of an
hour, with the mucous membrane of the mouth and nostrils corroded, and a
bloody discharge from the nose. A severe attack of bronchitis followed,
during which he could not speak for six days; but being actively treated
with antiphlogistic remedies, he recovered.[476]—An extraordinary case
has been published by Mr. Paget of death from injecting ammonia into the
blood-vessels. A solution weak enough to allow of the nose being held
over it was injected into a nævis in a child two years old. An attack of
convulsions immediately followed, and in a minute the child
expired.[477]
Nysten’s case is the only one in the human subject in which the _morbid
appearances_ were ascertained. The nostrils were blocked up with an
albuminous membrane. The whole mucous coat of the larynx, trachea,
bronchi, and even of some of the bronchial ramifications, was mottled
with patches of lymph. The gullet and stomach showed red streaks here
and there; and there was a black eschar on the tongue, and another on
the lower lip.
_Of Poisoning with Hydrochlorate of Ammonia._—The effects of the
hydrochlorate of ammonia on animals have been examined by Professor
Orfila and Dr. Arnold; but I have not yet met with any instance of its
operation as a poison on man. When given to dogs it irritates and
inflames the parts it touches, and causes the ordinary symptoms of local
irritation. But it also acts remotely. For, first, like arsenic, and
other poisons of the third order of irritants, it produces inflammation
of the stomach, in whatever way it is applied to the body,—Orfila having
found that organ affected when the salt was applied to the subcutaneous
cellular tissue;[478] and, secondly, according to the experiments of
Arnold, it causes, when swallowed, excessive muscular weakness, slow
breathing, violent action of the heart, and tetanic spasms,—effects
which cannot arise from mere injury of the stomach. Half a drachm will
thus kill a rabbit in eight or ten minutes;[479] and two drachms a small
dog in an hour.[480]
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