Acute liver necrosis following overdose of paracetamol.

A woman aged 30, an inmate of a mental institution, was admitted to hospital two hours after ingesting at least 50 paracetamol tablets. She had been discovered while still swallowing some of the drug, and gastric lavage was carried out almost immediately. She had been under psychiatric care since adolescence and had received various drug therapies. Currently she was taking nortriptyline, 25 mg. three times a day. She had been taking barbiturates as hypnotics for many years. In the past she had been treated with chlorpromazine and amitriptyline.