GENERAL SPHERE OF ACTION.
Arsenious-acid appears to exert a SPECIFIC influence on several parts of the body, especially the alimentary canal, the heart, and the nervous system. That the alimentary canal is specifically affected is shown by the inflammation of the stomach produced by the application of Arsenic to wounds, and which, accordingly to Sir B. Brodie, is more violent and more immediate than when this poison is taken into the stomach itself. That the heart is also specifically acted on by Arsenious-acid is proved by the symptoms (the anxiety at the precordia, the quick, irregular pulse.), and by the post-mortem appearances (red spots in the substance of this viscus), and by the diminished susceptibility to the galvanic influence. The specific affection of the nervous system is inferred from the symptoms; namely, the headache, giddiness, wandering pains, impaired sensibility of the extremities, delirium, coma, feebleness, lassitude, trembling of the limbs, and the paralysis, or tetanic symptoms. The alimentary canal, heart, and nervous system are not to the only parts on which this acid appears to exert a specific influences; the lungs, the skin, the salivary glands,., are also specifically affected. The disorder of the lungs is inferred from the local pain, cough, and occasional inflammatory appearances after death. The eruptions and other altered appearances of the skin, and the falling off the hair and nails, sometimes noticed, have led to the idea of the specific influence of Arsenious-acid on the cutaneous system; an opinion which seems further supported by the fact of the remarkable influence it exercises in some cutaneous diseases, especially lepra. The salivation noticed by Marcus, Ferriar, McFarley, Cazenave, and others, shows that the salivary glands are specifically influenced. The swelling of the face, and the irritation and redness of the eyelids also deserve notice, in connection with the specific effects of this poison.
CLINICAL REMARKS.
HAHNEMANN. “Fits of anguish at night, driving him out of bed. Burning in skin; burning pain in the ulcers. Quotidian and intermittent fevers. Scabs. Inflammation of the eyes and lids. Vomiting after every meal, burning pain at the pit of the stomach. Corrosive ulcerated blisters in the soles and toes.”
DR. GRAY. “It is important that practitioners should point their attention of the question, whether drugs when are ISOMORPHOUS are not, on that account, allies in the treatment of disease; thus Arsenic, Phosphorus, and Antimony, being eminent instance of the isomorphous relation, and being strikingly analogous in their pathogenesy, is it not very probable that these two similitudes depend on the same element in each-namely, an identical original force or power? We find these drugs chemically uniting with other substances in precisely the same atonic proportions, and producing crystals in each case of the same form.
“The analogies between these drugs as to their pharmacotoxic results, already very striking, would doubtless have been still more so, if either the simple form in each case had been tried on the healthy, or, what is the same thing, the same combination, as, for example, the sulphuret of each had been in use for the pathogenesy.
“It is quite possible we may, by looking in this direction diligently, find the rich vein of classification upon which Boenninghausen has empirically struck so eagerly, and yet with so little satisfaction to his colleagues.” ED.
GENERAL SYMPTOMS.
Pains in the whole body, excessive, intolerable, in every position of the body, mostly in the evening. Anxiety, with languor; inability to collect one’s senses; reeling sensation, and difficulty of attending to all his business. *Attacks of hysteric weakness-Fainting fits; violent, deep; with weak pulse; with vertigo and swelling of the face; early in the morning, with anxiety. *General rapid sinking of strength; *excessive debility; particularly of the lower limbs, knees, hands, and feet, which are trembling; as from want of food; when walking ever so little; lameness; *weakness, with inability to take even a few steps without sinking, particularly previous to vomiting setting in; *weakness, obliging him to die down, with inability to leave the bed; *he feels stronger when lying down, and sometimes falls down suddenly when rising, with vertigo and aggravation of the headache; *weakness, with dropping of the lower jaw, sunken,
extinct eyes, and open mouth; with profuse sweat, vomiting, and haematuria. *Emaciation, marasmus, consumption; *sometimes with fever; with livid face, blue margins around the eyes, great debility, want to disposition to do anything, and constant desire to lie down; atrophy of children with tympanitis and glandular swellings.*Spasms; *tetanic spasms *convulsions, with frightful contortion of the limbs, or else the convulsions may be excited by violent pains in the bottom of the feet. *Epileptic fits: *with burning in the stomach and spinal marrow, with sensation as if the paroxysm commenced in the spinal marrow, and moved thence to behind the ears and into the brain, after which the patient becomes giddy, and falls down with loss of consciousness; or else the paroxysms commence with beating about with the arms, and end with a jerk through the whole body; during the paroxysm, the patient is lying like a dead person, pale but warm, his thumbs are clenched, his fists are turned to and fro, the arms are slowly drawn up and down, his mouth is distorted, and the breathing has become imperceptible. *Trembling of the limbs; particularly when walking; with sweat in the face; *in drunkards. Stiffness and immobility of the limbs; particularly of the knees and feet; with violent lacerating pains; paralysis, particularly of the lower limbs. *Disease of the mucous membrane and chronic blenorrhoea; *dropsical complaints; *scrofulous affections. Complaints arising from abuse of China or Iodine; *from drinking wine; *from cold and wet. *Arthritic and rheumatic pains and complaints; *drawing and lacerating, particularly in the limbs, with inability to lie on the affected part, and diminution of the pains when moving the affected part tearing in the bones; *burning, particularly in the interior of the affected parts; burning-corrosive pains; pain in the affected part as if the bone were swollen and interstitially distended, or as if an ulcer were seated there.
CHARACTERISTIC PECULIARITIES.
Arsenic is especially suitable to melancholy, but also to nervous and even choleric temperaments; also to females. The pains wake one particularly before midnight; *they are fell at night while sleeping; *the pains seem intolerable drive on to despair and frenzy;* they appear periodically, and are particularly apt to recur every day or every fourth day. *The paroxysms of pain are frequently accompanied with secondary complaints, such as: *principally in the evening after lying down; *after midnight; *early in the morning after rising; when sitting or lying down; after dinner. Aggravation: *after dinner; from the conversation of other persons; when sitting o r lying down, when the pains become intolerable. Amelioration: when standing, and when morning the affected part; *by walking about, particularly of the pains which come on at night; *by the application of warmth: by compression of the affected part.
SKIN.
*Chlorosis; *jaundice. *General anasarca. Swelling of the face and body. Inflammatory swellings, with burning pains. The skin of the body peels off in large scales; painfulness of the skin all over the body; *burning and burning itching;*parchment-like dryness, coldness, and blueness of the skin. Spots; blue, particularly on the abdomen, genitals, and in the white of the eye; inflamed, like measles, especially on the head, face, and neck; *resembling petechiae, *accompanied with typhus-putrieus, or unaccompanied by any fever, painful in the evening. *Miliary eruption; scaling off; red, scorbutic; *white.*Urticaria. Itch like eruption, fine, like sand, itching; particularly in the bends of the knees. *Pustules; *red pustules, changing to ichorous, crusty, burning, and spreading ulcers, sometimes seen on the head and in the whiskers; *blotches filled with blood and pus, excessively painful. *The Arsenic should be exhibited in small-pox, when hoarseness angina-faucium, and diarrhoea supervene. Little blotches which heal with difficulty white blotches of the size of lentils, and having the color of the skin with a biting sensation, particularly at night. *Black blisters, burning and very painful. *Carbuncle. *Herpes, having a red, unwholesome appearance, with vesicles and violent burning, particularly at night; (in the pit of the stomach and back). *Ulcers: *cancerous, particularly painful every in the morning; *with burning in the ulcer and in the margin; *with lacerating pain, *particularly when the parts become cold; *mortifying ulcers; *putrid; *with high edges; *with red, shining areola, a nd basis which is either black-blue or has the appearance of lard; *with thin, bloody pus; *with foetid ichor and proud flesh, which soon becomes putrid, blue, and green; *with a thin scurf on the surface, and slight bleeding when bandaging the ulcers; with deficient secretion of put; *ulcers having the shape of warts. *Varices. Chilblains. Discoloration of the nails.
