NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 397 



enlivening our dreams by midnight concerts in the backyard. 

 He was given one-twentieth of a grain of conia on four consecu- 

 tive nights. Finding that this dose produced no effect, on the 

 fifth night I gave him two drops hypodermically, yet that night, 

 though very much under the influence of the drug, he, after many 

 failures, managed to creep to his trysting place and commenced 

 his regular nocturnal music. This experiment proves beyond a 

 doubt that conia has no power to arrest or depress natural sexual 

 desire ; but while this is the case in the normal condition, 

 morbid states are said to be much influenced by the drug. In 

 proof of this, Dr. Harley (loc. cit. p. 51) writes : "In those states 

 of exhaustion and irritability which arise from self-abuse ; and in 

 those cases of erotic tendency that arise from some obscure irri- 

 tation of the lumbar portion of the cord, I have never known 

 conium to fail to give relief." In my opinion, however, this relief 

 is better explained by referring it to the depressant action which 

 the drug has on the spinal cord, than to any possible action on 

 the sexual orq-ans. 



'' 



Absorption and Elimination. 



That conia is absorbed is beyond question, as it has been 

 found by Orfila in the spleen, kidneys, and lungs of poisoned 

 animals. Absorption occurs without regard to the manner in 

 which the drug is inti*oduced into the system, but when the drug 

 is placed on the whole skin in small quantities, absorption does 

 not take place. That this must be due to its great volatility is 

 shown by the following experiment. 



Exp. 85. Placed thirteen very small frogs in a weak solution of 

 conia at 4.81 ; took them out in one-half minute. 4.35, four of 

 the frogs are paralyzed. At 4.37, three more were paralyzed, and 

 by 4.40, all were paralyzed. 



Absorption must have taken place through the skin of these 

 animals, as the solution merely I'eached up to their abdomen. 



Conia undergoes no change in the system, although Harley says 

 it does, because he failed to find it in the urine of poisoned 

 animals ; yet it is eliminated by the kidneys, in whose secretion 

 Zaleski and Draggendorf (H. C. Wood's Therapeutics) have found 

 abundance of it in the first twelve hours of the poisoning, and 

 traces of it for two da} r s and a half. 



That it is not necessary for conia to be changed in the system 



