Strychninum

Authorities. 162, R. Gilsan, Amer. Journ. of Med. Sci., New Ser., No. 150, 1878, ]). 449, a man, ret. twenty-five years, took a dose; 163, V. R. Bridges, M.D., Chicago Med. Journ. and Exam., 1879, p. 48, a girl, set. nine years, took an unknown quantity.

I found him in terrible tetanic convulsions. His legs and arms were extended, hands clenched, feet and toes incurvated, and his body was rigidly arched backward, and resting on his heels and back of his head. In short, all his muscles seemed to be in a state of rigidity. There were also the rims sardonicus, and a general cyanosed appearance of the skin. During the paroxysm the pulse was too frequent to be counted, and his pupils were slightly dilated. It was impossible on account of trismus and the violence of the general spasms, to administer an emetic by the mouth or to use the stomach-pump. The next morning I found him well, but still feeling some muscular soreness and fatigue, and fully resolved to let Strychnia alone in the future. He said no one could imagine the fearful agony it had caused him, and that he would rather be burnt to death than again suffer the pangs that he had endured from this horrible poison. He told me also that after taking the Strychnia he locked the door of his room, and lay down on his bed to die, as he supposed, in a rapid and easy manner. When the spasms commenced they soon put him in such fearful agony that he screamed for help,—Continuous and persistent spasm from head to foot, with an alarming and distressing opisthotonos, rendered all the more painful from the fact that she was entirely unconscious of her sufferings, while any effort to relieve her by the slightest touch, or causing her to swallow, only aggravated her condition, by apparently exciting every muscle to increase its tension,’®'*.