CURARE. 253 



their arrows. It is called curare, ourari, or wurali, and 

 is a brown, condensed plant juice, which is brought over 

 in hollowed, gourd-like fruits called calabashes. He 

 found that animals poisoned with this curare are dis- 

 abled, and that in animals thus disabled, irritation of 

 the nerve- trunks, even with the strongest electric or 

 other irritants, is entirely ineffective, though the 

 muscles are yet easily irritable. This was indeed no 

 new phenomenon. Harless, at Munich, had already 

 observed something similar in strongly etherised ani- 

 mals. But soon afterwards, Koelliker, at Wiirzburg, 

 and, simultaneously, Bernard himself, in extending 

 the experiments of the latter, found something new. 

 If ligatures are applied to the hough of a frog, and 

 the animal is then poisoned with curare, the lower leg 

 is not disabled. By irritation of the sciatic nerve the 

 muscles of the lower leg may be induced to contract 

 where the poison could not penetrate, the appropriate 

 vessels being tightly constricted. Curare, therefore, 

 does not disable the muscles, for these always and 

 everywhere remain irritable ; nor does it disable the 

 nerve-trunks, for these remain irritable if the poison 

 cannot reach the muscles. There is but one other thing 

 possible : the poison disables something which is be- 

 tween the nerve-trunk and the muscle-fibre, so that the 

 nerve-trunk can no longer act on the muscle. If that 

 which is disabled is the end of the nerve, then the im- 

 mediate irritability of the muscle-substance, without 

 the participation of the nerves, about which there has 

 been so much strife, is proved. 



This striking phenomenon is not solitary. The 

 action of some other poisons, such as nicotine and 

 conine, is entirely like that of curare. These also dis- 



