Vice-President’s Address. LY 
intimated that in putrefying fish there was a poison which 
he had been able to separate, and which probably, he thought, 
was formed as the result of the action of the minute 
organisms that were found in the putrefying mass, feeding on 
the albuminoid materials of which the fish was composed. 
Panum, the professor of physiology in the university of 
Copenhagen, corroborated Burrow’s observations from an 
independent standpoint, and in 1856 gave to the world his 
experiments on sepsine, a substance that resulted from a 
putrefactive process, and that gave rise to symptoms of 
septic poisoning. From that time forward, through the 
labours of Selmi in Italy, of Gautier, Bouchard, and others in 
France, of Brieger in Germany, and of numerous other minor 
workers, we have been supplied with many facts relating to 
the physiological action of these poisons. From the nature 
and physiological peculiarities of these substances, it was at 
first supposed that the ptomaines or cadaveric alkaloids 
resembled the vegetable alkaloids which had previously been 
described, but on attempting to separate them by the various 
alkaloidal processes, it was found that whilst many of the 
most poisonous ptomaines could not be separated by the 
ordinary methods, and did not give even the alkaloidal 
reactions, certain substances which are known to have no 
relation to alkaloids are found to give the so-called 
characteristic reactions, so that further search had to be made 
into the composition of these ptomaines. 
Our knowledge of these substances has been gradually 
extended. We know that some are poisonous, that others are 
non-poisonous, that even in the products of putrefaction the 
same holds good. We now know that they are derived from 
nitrogenous material, that they are, in fact, the result of the 
action of bacteria on animal or vegetable albuminoid mate- 
rial, that they are basic in character, that there are frequently 
only minute differences in their composition, and that they 
are very unstable, readily undergoing oxidation, and that the 
only means by which these unstable substances can be 
examined and preserved is by rendering them stable, and by 
making them enter into combination with certain substances, 
such as the chlorides of mercury, platinum and gold, picric 
VOL. XI. B 
