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MEMORANDA ON POISONS.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Tanner’s Practice of Medicine.
Fifth American from the Sixth London Edition. GreatlyEnlarged and Improved.
Price, bound in cloth, $6 00; in leather, $7 00.
Tanner’s Practical Treatise on The Diseasesof Infancy and Childhood.
Third American Edition, Revised and Enlarged, by AlfredMeadow, M. D.
Octavo. Cloth, $3 50.
Tanner’s Index of Diseases and their Treatment.
With upwards of 500 Formulæ for Medicines, Baths,Mineral Waters, Climates for Invalids, etc., etc.
Octavo. Price, $3 00.
MEMORANDA
ON
POISONS.
BY THE LATE
THOMAS HAWKES TANNER, M.D., F.L.S.
THIRD AND COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION.
PHILADELPHIA:
LINDSAY & BLAKISTON.
1872.
HENRY B. ASHMEAD, PRINTER.
EDITOR’S PREFACE.
The present edition of Dr. Tanner’s “Memorandaon Poisons” is in some respects almost a new book.It was, as will be seen by the Author’s Preface tothe last Edition, Dr. Tanner’s object to furnishthe practitioner with a useful guide to his dutiesin cases of poisoning. Experience has, however,shown that the book is more useful to the studentthan to the practitioner; and, with a view to renderit still more valuable to the former, it has ingreat measure been remodelled. Whilst, therefore,due attention has been paid to what mightbe called the clinical aspects of poisoning, itschemical bearings have been more closely attendedto; and the more important and reliable testshave in each instance been given, as have alsothe more important processes for separatingpoisons from organic admixture. Sick of the oldand clumsy classification of poisons into Irritants,Narcotics, and Narcotico-Irritants, the editor hasendeavored to form some more rational groups oftoxic agents. These groups are, it is true, quiteprovisional; and they are somewhat similar to[Pg vi]those adopted by Dr. Guy in his admirable textbookon Forensic Medicine. They have, however,been worked out independently, whether theybe worth anything or no. Briefly they arethese:—
Corrosives.—Simple Irritants, Mineral, Vegetable,and Animal.—Irritant Gases.—Specific Irritants,Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal.—Neurotics:subdivided into Narcotics, Anæsthetics,Inebriants, Delirants, Convulsives, Hyposthenisants,Depressants, Asphyxiants,—and Abortives.
Such a grouping is far from perfect; but itwould be impossible to have anything worse thanthat still in general use. It is with the hope ofrendering this little volume more generally usefulthese changes have b