(See Chemistry Index, Supplement.) has lately been employed as a medicine by Alphonse Leroi, professor at the Medical School of Paris. Its effects, in a variety of cases, are thus described in the Bulletin de la Société Philomatique, 1798.
1. Phosphorus administered internally in consumptive diseases appears to give a certain degree of activity to life, and to revive the patient, without raising their pulse in the same proportion. The author relates several instances that occurred to him in the course of his practice. practice; one of which is as follows: Being called to attend a woman, at the point of death, who was quite worn out by a consumptive disorder, with which she had been afflicted for three years, in compliance with the earnest desire of her husband, who requested him to give her some medicine, he composed one of a portion of syrup diluted with water, in which a few flicks of phosphorus had been kept. Next day the woman found herself much better. She was revived for a few days; and did not die till about a fortnight after.
2. He himself, as he acknowledges, was so imprudent as to take two or three grains of solid phosphorus combined only with treacle, and experienced the most dreadful symptoms. At first he felt a burning heat in the whole region of the stomach. That organ seemed to be filled with gas which escaped by the mouth. Being dreadfully tormented, he tried to vomit, but in vain; and found relief only by drinking cold water from time to time. His uneasy sensations were at length allayed; but next morning he seemed to be endowed with an astonishing muscular force, and to be urged with an almost irresistible impulse to try its energy. The effect of this medicine at length ceased, adds the author, à la suite d'un priapisme violent.
3. In many cases the author employed, and still employs, phosphorus internally, with great benefit, to restore and revive young persons exhausted by excesses. He divides the phosphorus into very small particles, by shaking it in a glass filled with boiling water. He continues to shake the bottle, plunging it into cold water, and thus obtains a kind of precipitate of phosphorus, exceedingly fine, which he bruises slowly with a little oil and sugar, or afterwards employs as liquid electuary, by diluting the whole in the yolks of an egg. By means of this medicine he has effected astonishing cures, and restored the strength of his patients in a very short time.
4. In malignant fevers the use of phosphorus internally, to check the progress of gangrene, has succeeded beyond expectation. The author relates several instances.
5. Pelletier told him, that having left, through negligence, some phosphorus in a copper basin, that metal was oxidated, and remained suspended in the water. Having thoughtlessly thrown out the water in a small court in which ducks were kept, these animals drank of it, and all died. Mais le male (says the author) convint toutes ses femelles jusque au dernier instant de sa vie. An observation which accords with the effect experienced by the author.
6. The author relates a fact which proves the astonishing divisibility of phosphorus. Having administered to a patient some pills, in the composition of which there was not more than a quarter of a grain of phosphorus, and having had occasion afterwards to open the body, he found all the internal parts luminous; and even the hands of the person who had performed the operation, though washed and well dried, retained a phosphoric splendor for a long time after.
7. The phosphoric acid, employed as lemonade, has been serviceable to the author in the cure of a great number of diseases.
8. Leroy assures us that he oxidated iron with phosphorus, and obtained, by the common means, a white oxyd, almost irreducible, which he thinks may be employed with advantage in the arts, and particularly in painting with oil, and in enamel, instead of the white phosphorus of lead. This white oxyd of iron occasioned violent retchings to the author, who ventured to place a very small particle of it on his tongue. He does not hesitate, therefore, to consider this oxyd as a terrible poison. He was not able to reduce it but by fixed alkali and the glass of phosphorus.
9. The author affirms that, by means of phosphorus, he decomposed and separated from their bases the sulphuric, muriatic, and nitric acids; that by help of the phosphoric acid he transmuted earths; and that with calcareous earth he can make, at pleasure, considerable quantities of magnesia. He declares, that to his labours on phosphorus he is indebted for processes by which he effects the dissipation (opère la fuite) of rubies, the fusion of emeralds, and the vitrification of mercury.
We agree with the editor of the respectable Miscellany*, from which we have immediately taken this article, that British practitioners will do well to use their wonted caution in the application of so powerful a remedy. Indeed we consider it so very hazardous a remedy, that we had resolved to make no mention of it, till we found it transferred into various journals, both foreign and domestic, and thence began to suspect that we might be accused of culpable negligence, were we to pass unnoticed what had attracted the attention of many of our fellow-labourers in the field of science.
in astrocomy, is the morning star, or the planet Venus, when she rises before the sun. The Latins call it Lucifer, the French Étoile de berger, and the Greeks Phosphorus.