Observations and experiments on the efficacy and modus operandi of cupping-glasses, in preventing and arresting the effects of poisoned wounds / by Caspar Wistar Pennock.

Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations and experiments on the efficacy and modus operandi of cupping-glasses, in preventing and arresting the effects of poisoned wounds / by Caspar Wistar Pennock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    diate contact with the first portions, thirty grains more of the arse- nious acid. Every precaution was taken to secure the orifices of the wounds. The dogs were fed and supplied with water, of which they drank large quantities. They were then muzzled as before. In the course of a few hours afterward, the large dog exhibited symptoms of pain, restlessness, intense thirst, and great muscular debility, particularly of the hinder legs. The pain became more and more intense, and nausea, vomiting, and purging continued during the night. On the morning of the eighteenth he died—twenty-three hours after the insertion of the additional portion ot arsenic, and for- ty-eight from the commencement of the experiment. The other dog was subjected to the application of the cupping- glass during the whole of the 17th, and at eleven and a half o’clock, P. M. he was lashed down by rope and bandages, and his mouth se- cured; hoping, by this expedient, to retain the cup on him during the , night. He however severed the cords, and the cup fell off, the as- sistant supposed, between four anti five o’clock, on the morning of the 18th. On the 18th, at nine o’clock, A. M. whilst the large dog was dying, I excised the poison from the smaller animal, washed the wound, closed it by suture and adhesive plaster. The dog lived and did well; seven days afterwards he became the subject of another experiment. Upon examining the dog which was killed, the mucous coat of the sto- mach was found highly inflamed, the sub-serous tissue of that organ, as well as that of the intestines generally, was congested with blood. In both ventricles of the heart was contained very dark-coloured blood. In the examination of a portion of blood from the heart and vena cava, 1 was assisted by my friend Mr. J. P. Wetheuill; but we did not detect the presence of the arsenious acid. Being desirous of rendering more generally useful, the method of preventing the fatal effects of poison by the exhaustion of cupping- glasses, I resolved to institute a series of experiments on the bite of the rattlesnake. Messrs. T. and F. Peale, with their accustomed liberality grant- ed me the use of a very fine snake, (Croiulus horridus, banded rat- tlesnake,) nearly five feet in length, whose bite on the smaller animals they had obseived to be almost umlormly fatal. My first experiments were performed on the 20th of August; two rabbits, whose hinder extremities had been previously shaved, were presented for the bite, lhe fiist rabbit was bitten twice; on the back and hind leg. The second was bitten, an hour afterwards, on the thigh. lhe first soon manifested signs of great muscular debility, and lay