74 ■ THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



able. Their eagerness to eat corn was in no way diminished. On the 

 twelfth day seven of the hens at i p. m. received lo pills, each containing 

 0.05 gramme of boric acid — i. e., each received 0.5 gramme, or 7.72 grains. 

 At 3 p. M. the same dose was repeated, so that every animal had received 

 one gramme, or 15.43 grains. The eighth hen received 50 grammes of 

 sweet almonds. On the thirteenth day no appearance of illness had mani- 

 fested itself, and on the sixteenth day the fowls appeared perfectly well. 



From this it is fully proved : (i) that if blanc-mange be prepared with 

 milk and boric acid added even in such excessively large quantity as 6.5 

 grammes in a liter (or one ounce and 18^ grains in a gallon) it is not 

 poisonous, and further that boric acid itself in such large doses as one to 

 two grammes (or 15.43 to 30.86 grains) exercises no toxic effect on hens ; 

 (2) that the toxic appearances observed by Dr. Robinson in the hens did 

 not arise from boric acid ; and (3) that Dr. Robinson has not succeeded in 

 ascertaining the true cause of the sickness which affected the hens and the 

 inmates of the house. It is not necessary to state that my experiment on 

 the hens has no other value than to prove Dr. Robinson's error. 



Another point in Dr. Annett's article concerning the feeding of kittens 

 requires to be gone into. Such experiments are extremely surviceable to 

 the inquiry, but in the present instance the experiments performed do 

 not fulfill their intended purpose, viz., to prove the toxic effect of small 

 doses of boric acid when given for a long time. All that these experiments 

 prove is already known, viz., that animals finally succumb under the repe- 

 tition of large doses. I regret the necessity for adversely criticising these 

 experiments, nevertheless, it is not stated how much the kitten ate, and the 

 experiments show that conclusions based on only two series of experiments 

 are founded on insufl&cient data, since two of the kittens fed on milk con- 

 taining 40 grains died earlier than any of those fed on milk which contained 

 80 grains. It is necessary in order to form a reliable judgment concern- 

 ing the feeding of kittens to have a long series of experiments. As I have 

 stated, the difficulty is here present that the data given are imperfect. 

 They permit, however, of a conclusion being drawn. One comes to the 

 following results. If we take a solution of 40 grains in the gallon, corre- 

 sponding to the second series of experiments, then there are 2.592 grammes 

 in 4.545 liters (z. e., in one gallon) or 0.57 gramme in one liter. How- 

 ever, in the data given by the experimenter it is not stated how much of 

 the milk the kittens consumed. It may have been a small quantity, say 

 100 cubic centimeters, which each kitten drank. In this case the animal 

 ingested 0.057 gramme or 0.88 of a grain of boric acid. The mean weight 

 of the kittens in the series was 408.4 grammes. 



It must now be settled to what age in a child these three-weeks old to 

 four-weeks old kittens are comparable. If we accept that a man grows till 

 he is 20 years of age and that a cat grows till it is two years old, then the 



