On the Modus Operandi of Death from Creosote. [Volume: 2, Issue: 3, October, 1860, pp. 148-149]

148

THE DENTAL COSMOS.

animus of the silly taunts of opponents, as to the Council being a "selfelected" body, will at once be exposed.
It has been decided to hold an international great exhibition in London
in 1862. I hope the opportunity will not be lost of cultivating a more
intimate friendship between dentists on both sides of the Atlantic; but
some on this side sadly need a little more of the "milk of human kindness" to enter their constitutions ere then, if the meeting is to take place,
as it should do, in a spirit of universal generosity.
An action was lately brought, in this metropolis, by a dentist, Fresco
by name, against an attorney who had previously been engaged in a case
against him, and who, when so engaged, made public statements which he
subsequently failed to prove. The lawyer had to pay ~450 damages.
With all the facts of this case before me, I may say that I think the lawyer was served right; but, if the verdict had gone the other way, I could
hardly tax my good nature to the extent of sympathizing with the
plaintiff.
LONDON, 1860.
ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF DEATH FROM CREOSOTE.
BY W. H. ATKINSON, M.D.
HAVING been cognizant of a few deaths by creosote, I have been led to
consider its mode of operation upon the living economy. The comparative rarity of deaths from this agent being the cause of our want of demonstrative means for the proper understanding of this subject, and feeling that something to attract attention in that direction might not be out
of place in the pages of the DENTAL COSMOS, I offer a few sentences in
relation thereto in the hope they may do good.
The specific action of this agent in producing death, as yet, has not
been satisfactorily explained-if, indeed, it can ever be. There is something so occult in its modus operandi as to elude even profound investigation. It, indeed, simulates the most prompt and virulent poisons, acting apparently upon the life forces through the nervous track (possibly
ganglionic or sympathetic system) so pertinaciously, that antidoting is
out of the question by aly known means.
Like most, if not all, of the virulent poisons, it, when properly attenuated and combined, exerts a most salutary and curative effect, especially
upon the mucous surfaces.
Such deaths suggestively point to the probability of the vital principle
being in some way connected with or controlled by some form of what is
now called electricity; if not, indeed, a mode of expression adopted by
this inexplicable presence. The immediate mode of death, or the part
that yields first to the destroyer, so far as known, has not been observedsome cases dying by enervation and others by choking, producing true