Rectum and Stool.
Great desire for stool, which went off in three minutes.
Diarrhoea. Bowels moved involuntarily (after seven hours and a half).
Urinary and Sexual Organs
Micturition painful (after five days). Urine plentiful, dark- colored, turbid (eleventh day). Increased flow of urine, in which there was a copious sediment. Urine clear, high-colored (fifth day). Passed a pint of urine, reddish, and depositing a copious white sediment (second day); urine reddish, thick, high-colored (third day); dark, with sediment (fifth day); plentiful and still thick (tenth day). No urine since midnight, at 10 A.M.; thick, dark-colored, at midnight (second day); free, dark-colored, with sediment (fifth day). Semi-priapism (second day).
Respiratory organs
Voice. Very hoarse (seventh day). Cough and Expectoration. Coughs slightly, and expectorates with mucus (third day); expectoration bloody (fourth day); cough troublesome, sputum dark, but not so bloody (seventh day); expectoration copious (ninth day); very copious, loose, and less bloody; easy, and becoming white (tenth day). Short cough (second day). Much mucus in the throat raised with freedom (second day); expectorates a white frothy phlegm (third day); expectorates a heavy greenish-yellow matter (fourth day); frequent cough, with copious purulent expectoration, in the forenoon; cough and expectoration frequent, in the evening (sixth day); spits a large quantity of heavy purulent mucus (seventh day); expectorates with great difficulty the same dark-greenish matter (ninth day). Respiration. Spasmodic respiration. A convulsive attempt at respiration was made to expel the blood and froth from the mouth. Breathing convulsive. Breathes heavily (second day); breathing short, in the morning; laborious, hurried with loud tracheal rattles, in the evening (third day); breathing easier (fourth day); much shorter (seventh day); more oppressed (eighth day); laborious (ninth day); very short (tenth day); slight mucous rattle in the trachea (eleventh day). Breathing labored. Breathing stertorous and labored. Breathing hurried (after seven hours and a half); labored (second day). Breathing short (after six hours and a half); hurried (second day); hurried, slight rattling in trachea (second day); short and difficult when she moved (seventh day); loud mucous rattles in the trachea (eleventh day). Shortness of breath, with sudden distension of the abdomen (second day). Breathing slow and labored, interrupted by constant sighing and convulsive cough.
Difficult respiration. Breathing free (after one hour and three- quarters). Respiration very difficult. Occasionally there was a sudden cessation of breathing, followed by a catching sigh, indicating probable spasm of the diaphragm. Respiration hardly perceptible.
Chest
Chest firmly fixed. On the right side of the chest there is dulness on percussion, the natural murmur wanting, a short bronchial sound; on the left side, sonorous rattles; the heart’s action quick, weak, with a thrilling sensation communicated to the hand (fifth day). Pain in chest and abdomen (second day).
Pain in the right side under the ribs (eleventh day). Pain in breast (after six hours and a half). Pain in breast (after ten hours and a half).
Heart and Pulse
Pain in the heart. Acceleration of the pulse. The pulse at first was about 100 in the minute, but it soon became hardly perceptible, and in all the cases was imperceptible for hours previous to death. Pulse feeble, at 8 A.M.; soft, greatly accelerated, in the evening (third day); fuller, about 100, at 8 A.M. (fourth day); soft, 112, at 1 P.M. (fifth day); feeble, 120, at 10 A.M. (seventh day); soft, feeble, very frequent (eighth day). Pulse frequent and feeble, at noon (second day).; 108, soft (fifth day); soft, 90 (seventh day); very small and feeble (eleventh day). Pulse 84, feeble and irregular (first day); 84, rising to 108, on sitting up (second day). Pulse soft, feeble, 78, much accelerated by slight exertion (second day). Slow feeble pulse. Feeble pulse. Pulse very small, feeble, rather slow. Pulse sort, irregular, 48 to 52. Pulse 40, small and wiry (after one hour and three- quarters). Pulse almost imperceptible. “Pulse scarcely to be felt” (first case). Pulseless.
Extremities
Lost the use of his limbs (after one hour and a half). Arms flexed at elbow in a right angle. Irritation of the hands and arms, with sharp lancinating pains. Rapid convulsive twitching of muscles of hands. Hands firmly clenched. Tendency to cramps in lower extremities. Legs stretched straight out.
Generalities.
He fell back, foaming at the mouth and black in the face. “Gave a leap” and then fell, receiving, in the fall, a severe injury to the forehead (one case). Trunk powerfully bent forward. All reflex excitability was gone; irritation of the fauces; by putting in the stomach-pump did not in the least excite any tendency to vomit. One lost his hair and nails. It was impossible to get them to swallow anything. They never spoke or uttered any cry indicating that they were in pain. One seemed “rather mesmerized than comatose.” Risus sardonicus, and other symptoms.
Reeling. Long-continued rigors, and it almost proved fatal (after a tablespoonful). In a state of almost immovable rigidity; insensible, moaning, and breathing stertorously; countenance livid; eyes fixed; pupils dilated; sanguineous foam issuing from the mouth; intense action of the dorsal and lumbar muscles, or opisthotonos; the pulse very feeble, and the heart’s action even scarcely perceptible; lower jaws firmly locked; the tongue much injured and slightly protruding; in eight or ten minutes from the time of first seeing him, he expired gently and without a struggle. Severe rigors. Body rigid. Rigors. They were in great agonies, with violent heat in stomach and throat, before they fell into convulsions. Occasional general convulsions. The convulsions were not of the body, but of the mouth, face, and extremities. In about half an hour they were all seized with symptoms of poisoning, and one died soon after in strong convulsions. When placed in a sitting posture, his head would fall forward or backward, or to the shoulder, but when replaced on the pillow he tossed his head from side to side, accompanied by jactitations of the hands. Jactitation, if not convulsions, in almost all. Numbness, nausea, horrid convulsions, and at last tetanic stiffness, coma, and death; almost all died. The first attacked with symptoms of poisoning was a boy, aged three years; whilst eating a cake he fell down in convulsions, and was quite unconscious (after a quarter of an hour); he remained this way till 10 o’clock that night, when he died. Immediately afterwards, a little boy, aged five years, and a girl, about the same age (both of whom had had some of the root), were attacked in the same way. The boy died about o’clock that evening; the girl recovered. In another house, a girl, aged six years, was attacked, together with a boy about the same age. The girl died the next afternoon about 4 o’clock; the boy recovered. There were others affected, but in a lesser degree. The signs of poisoning were the same in all the cases; about fifteen minutes after eating the root they became unconscious, and were violently convulsed, at the same time the jaws were closely locked, the mouth covered with foam, in some cases mixed with a little blood; the convulsive fits recurred, one after another, with extreme rapidity, there being scarcely an interval of half a minute between each; in the case of the girl, who lived nearly a day, there was considerably opisthotonos, or arching of the back, on the second day, which had taken the place of the violent general convulsions of the previous evening; about three hours before she died the convulsions ceased altogether; she, however, remained in a state of coma till her death; the other two died in the convulsions. In one hour, some fell into syncope and convulsions; one died before the doctor arrived, two hours after supper; a second was expiring; a third showed no signs of life but trembling and convulsions. The activity of the poison was so sudden that I saw two fall into a swoon, whilst, at perfect ease about themselves, they were busily lavishing attention upon their sick comrades. Guillaume Trelacheau, a man strong and robust constitution, seemed the most hopeless. The upturning of his eyes, the contraction of his lower jaw, the feebleness of pulse, the inability to move, feel, or know anything, with a universal chill spread over his an emetic, I had him rolled and well shaken in a blanket, by eight men, for two hours; he recovered warmth, and then insensibly movement and life; the first signs were efforts to vomit, which, aided by the emetic, were effectual. The vomiting went on for days, take what he would. He fell asleep for fifteen hours. The third day his tongue was extremely sore and swollen from biting during the convulsions. He remembered nothing that had befallen him from the first to the third day of his illness, nor of the circumstances that had accompanied, not those which had caused it. The eldest suddenly fell backwards without any premonitory symptoms, and lay kicking and sprawling on the ground; his countenance soon turned very ghastly, and he foamed at the mouth (after four or five hours); soon after, four more were seized in the same way, and they all died before morning, not one having spoken a word. Terrible convulsions, followed by tetanic rigidity, coma, and death. Most violent convulsions and death in less than an hour from the time of taking the poison.
Born in 1837in Westminster, Vermont. . He was an orthodox doctor who converted to homeopathy
Dr. Allen compiled the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica over the course of 10 years.
In 1881 Allen published A Critical Revision of the Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica.