OF COMPOUND POISONING.
Having now investigated the three great classes of poisons in their
relations to physiology, practice of physic, and medical jurisprudence,
it will be necessary to offer a few observations on a subject of
considerable medico-legal importance, which has been almost overlooked
in systems of Toxicology,—Compound Poisoning.
When two poisons of different or opposite properties are administered
about the same time in poisonous doses, the effects of the one may
overpower and prevent the operation of the other, or they may merely
modify the action of one another. In this manner the usual symptoms
produced by one or by both may be entirely or in a great measure
wanting; and even in the dead body the usual appearances occasioned by
one or both may be modified or perhaps altogether absent.
Although in the course of reading I have met with a sufficient number of
cases of the kind to show that compound poisoning is an object of some
consequence to the medical jurist, the facts hitherto made public are
not so numerous as to render a systematic arrangement of them
practicable. The most advisable course, therefore, seems to be merely to
describe for the present the cases which have been brought under my
notice. These are as follows: