Natrum Salicylicum

Sodium salicylate, Nae7Hg03+ H^O.

Preparation, Triturations or solutions.

Authority. Dr. Petersen, Central-blatt. fur Chirurg, May 5th, 1877 (N. Y. Med. Record, July, 1877), a girl aged fifteen, took by mistake, 26 grammes, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. (fourteen days after a resection of the ankle-joint for chronic fungous arthritis).

The patient’s psychical condition was very striking, perfectly rational periods alternating with manifestations of insanity of a sombre character. This condition gradually disappeared in about eight days, the rational periods gradually becoming longer. The temperature had no influence on the psychical disturbances.

After her recovery, the patient remembered nothing that had happened during this entire period. In her rational intervals, she complained of severe headache, ringing in the ears, deafness, and impairment of vision for distant objects. For three or four days there were strabismus divergeus and marked mydriasis; for four or five days there was hoarseness, but as a laryngoscopic examination could not be made. Dr. Petersen is unable to say whether it depended on laryngitis or on paralysis of the vocal cords.

The respiration was rapid (forty per minute), but inspiration was quite deep. The pulse varied independently of the temperature, being at one time between 120 and 130, and at another between 80 and SO. The salicylate of soda did not, in this case, exert a prompt influence on the temperature.

Circumscribed spots of vascular dilatation, which changed their position from time to time, were observed on the face, neck, breast, and leg; these lasted for three days. A bed-sore rapidly formed on the sacrum, and was ascribed by Dr. Petersen to the vaso-motor disturbances. There was vomiting, but no gastric pains; no diarrhoea, but a very fetid smell to the faeces. The urine contained at least one-fifth per cent, of albumen, which gradually disappeared. There was no oedema of the legs. The treatment was symptomatic. Bromide of potassium was administered. During the subsequent two weeks, traumatic erysipelas set in on two occasions, but was arrested by subcutaneous injections of Salicylic acid. After the last injection, symptoms of poisoning (redness of face, dilatation of pupils, frequent respiration, pulse 130, etc.), set in, although the dose was very small (6 grammes, solution = 2 centigrammes, acid).