Introduction
Sulphuric acid. H2SO4. A product of the oxidation of sulphur, usually obtained by its combustion and subsequent treatment by nitrous vapours.
Provings
HAHNEMANN, Chronic Diseases, Part 5 of original, vol. of English translation. Contains 513 symptoms from self and 5 fellow-observers, and 8 from authors. Of these 5 belong to a typhoid fever from which the patients taking it were suffering. The others- “salivation,” “aphthae in mouth,” and “hiccup” – seem genuine effects of acid, and last repeatedly recurred after administration of clysters containing it.
2. Dr. D. COWLEY (now of Pittsburgh, Pa.), aet. 24, sanguine nervous temp. July 17th, (1855, being a very warm day, he had a craving for something acid, and put 3 or 4 drops of dilute sulphuric acid into half a tumbler of water, and drank it down. Immediately after had slightly cutting pain in left arm, extending whole length of it, and lasting a few seconds, perhaps 1 morning. In a few morning slightly cutting pain from stomach into hypochondria. In 1/2 hour slight cutting pain in region of caecum, lasting 2 or 3 m. In 1 hour slight pain in left thigh near knee, feeling as though it would soon become cutting; also slight feeling of tension in scalp and ear of left side, more in front of ear, lasting a few m. (Communicated.).
Poisonings
1 a. The local effects of the acid on the alimentary canal are chemical. That it is absorbed into the blood is shown by increased elimination of sulphates in urine; but it is not found there in a free state during life.
1b. In the urine, passed naturally or by artificial aid, very large amounts of albumen and casts have recently been detected (Wyss, Mannkopf, Munk and Leyden, and others). Still albuminuria has not as yet been recognised by all observers as a constant symptom of acute sulphuric acid poisoning ((Smoler found it but once in fourteen cases)…Recently Mannkopf has observed, in several cases of poisoning, neuralgic affections of the abdominal and intercostal nerves; also, in isolated cases, extended and severe hyperaesthesia over the whole trunk, symptoms regarding whose pathogenesis we are as yet entirely in the dark. In the different cases they developed at different times, between the 8th and the 22nd d. after the poisoning. After death the liver has been found in a state of fatty degeneration, the kidneys in that of parenchymatous nephritis. (BOEHM, Ziemssen’s Cyclopaedia, xvii.).
Hughes was a great writer and a scholar. He actively cooperated with Dr. T.F. Allen to compile his 'Encyclopedia' and rendered immeasurable aid to Dr. Dudgeon in translating Hahnemann's 'Materia Medica Pura' into English. In 1889 he was appointed an Editor of the 'British Homoeopathic Journal' and continued in that capacity until his demise. In 1876, Dr. Hughes was appointed as the Permanent Secretary of the Organization of the International Congress of Homoeopathy Physicians in Philadelphia. He also presided over the International Congress in London.