BY T. L. BANCROFT, M.B. II 
and collect the further precipitate, wash the precipitates, mix with 
a little water and decompose with sulphuretted hydrogen, evaporate 
to dryness, dissolve out with boiling alcohol, filter and evaporate, 
purify by repeated solution in water and evaporation. 
It is thus left as a dirty white non-crystalline substance, having 
a very faint odour and an extremely nasty taste. It is soluble 
in water and alcohol, insoluble in ether. The smallest amount 
shaken up with water will cause a froth. 
A solution in water has a disagreeable odour, and gives the fol- 
lowing reactions—precipitates with basic acetate of lead, slight 
precipitate with neutral acetate of lead and with tannic acid, no 
change with platinic or auric chlorides, sulphuric acid, or with 
perchloride of iron, alkalies deepen the colour, it reduces cupric 
oxide from alkaline solution of copper. It causes sneezing. 
A little was applied to the conjunctiva of a dog, it caused pain 
conjunctivitis and corneitis, owing to which the condition of the 
pupil could not be ascertained, so severe indeed was the inflam- 
mation that the eye-ball was thought, for two days, to have 
sloughed ; after the inflammation subsided there were opacities 
of the cornea. 
It is an irritant poison. ‘Topically applied to the frog’s muscle, 
nerve, or heart it paralyses them immediately. It stops the heart 
in diastole whether injected into a lymph sac or topically applied. 
Physiologically this substance agrees closely with Saponin, and 
chemically also it is similar. -I am of opinion that it is the same 
substance. 
