Alkaline Poisons — Their Antidotes and Treatment
Pot and pearl-ash, caustic potash, lye, carbonate of potash, soda, ammonia, hartshorn, salvolatile, smelling salts, burnt and unslaked lime, may be known by their alkaline, urinous, acrid taste; and in vomiting caused by them there is no fermentation of the substances ejected; litmus paper which has been turned red by acids becomes blue again by being dipped into them; the symptoms are nearly the same as from acids, with the exceptions mentioned above, and what is vomited is not sour.
1. Stir two tablespoonfuls of vinegar in a glass of water, warm, if you can, and give a tumbler full of it every five minutes.
2. Lemon juice or other acids, but greatly diluted — or sour fruit bruised in water.
3. Sour milk or butter-milk.
4. Mucilaginous drinks and injections.
5. Oil, particularly that of sweet almonds.
6. Tartaric acid lemonade, when potash has been taken.
Emetics are dangerous, and vomiting should only be excited by the above-mentioned drinks, and by tickling the throat with a feather.
In poisoning with carbonate of baryta (a peculiar kind of heavy, white earth, which is sometimes sold as ratsbane), pure vinegar is injurious; in this case give merely mucilaginous drinks and oil, and endeavor to excite vomiting, until you can procure Glauber’s salts (sulphate of soda)1,-or Epsom salts (sulphate of magnesia), which should be dissolved in lukewarm water and freely taken much diluted. Afterwards let the patient occasionally smells of camphor, or if this is of no use, sweet spirits of nitre. After poisoning from potash, give Carbo vegetabilis; after hartshorn, Hepar.
