The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-04-06
Tho Brooklyn Medical Tragedy.

In the melancholy tragedy just enacted in
Brooklyn in the name of science and medical
treatment there are some grave lessons,
equally important to the medical profession
and to the public. Perhaps the most OBJ
viously important lesson touches the great
differences that may exist between different
specimens of what Is nominally the same
medicine. At the Office of DR.. Agnew Mr.
Walker took one hundred and eighty drops of
the extract of conium without notable effect
At his own home he took one hundred and
fifty minims and was killed. Ordinarily the
word 'minim" is used in this connection as
more formal than the word "drop;" but if the
minims were measured in the graduated glass
the one hundred and fifty minims might have
been equal in fluid quantity to the one hum
dred and eighty drops. But if they were the
same in quantity, how different in effect were
the two specimens of medicine Conium, as
sold in the apothecary shops, is commonly
inert, and this experience of its worthlessness
has even led many writers on the materia
medica to treat as delusion the accounts of its
effects put on record by the older
physicians. As the ordinary extracts are
made in Europe, the inactivity which is their
common characteristic may be due to defec-
tive processes in the manufacture, to adultera-
ton or to age, and the consequent destruction
of the energetic elements of the substance.
Evidently the hundred and eighty drops were
from a specimen of this inert sort. But
Squibb's extracts are not like those that have
been slowed away in gallpots in somebody's
musty shop for half century, and his ex-
tract of conium was as vigorous as all the
medicines that come from his laboratory are
known to be. 1t may indeed have been made
from the plant as it grows in this country;
but the great difference between such medi-
cine as found in the shops and the same medi-
cine as prepared in an establishment like
Squibbs is a fact of which every practitioner
would seem likely to take notice, and we an
ticipate some material correction in the his
tory OF the case.
But the case also involves an important
lesson on the wisdom of giving virulent
poisons in only tentative doses in every case
where it IS possible that there may be an error
in the diagnosis-that is to say in cases where
those conditions may really not be present
upon the presumed presence Of which the
propriety of giving a certain medicine is
based. Fifty minIms of Squibb's extract
Frustrated this man. 1t WAS four or five times
as much as any healthy person could take
with impuniy at dose. But he took hun
dred more subsequently, and he had taken
one hundred and eighty drops short time
before-say three hundred and sixty drops
in all between two and SIX O'Clock of the
same afternoon-with just o possibility that
the first one hundred and eighty were
not absolutely inert, but came with
cumulative effect upon the operation Of
that whose greater activity started the
train of symptoms. If the mans brain
and spine were in q normal physiological
condition the prescription pointed tho way to
certain death. If they were in disordered
state there was the probability that they
would not be reduced to paralysis, but might
be only reduced SO far as to insure quiet and
regular action. But the result points to the
fact that the exaggerated nervous action upon
which the use of the powerful sedative was
based did not exist that undue action of the
great nervous centres was not the source of
the spasmodic trouble. Life itself began to
yield while the twitching of the facial muscles
was still in full play, and they were evidently,
therefore, beyond the reach Of the medicine
that was violent enough TO completely para
lyze those important nerves upon which the
action Of the heart and the muscles Of respir-
alton depend. In short, the result points to
diagnosis that might have saved Dr. Brown
Sequard many searings and scorings Of this
victim Of erroneous theory.