22 Buchanan 



It will be noticed that the probable pord delay was not only longer, but 

 more variable before the administration of the drug. The record of the 

 second response of the second muscle is given in fig. 4, for comparison with 

 the fourth of the first muscle reproduced in fig. 2, A. The comparison 

 brings out very forcibly the first effect of strychnine on the electrical reflex 

 response of muscle, namely — the response (to a weaker ultimate stimulus) 

 has become as strong (curve as steep) as that to the direct excitation of the 

 motor nerve ; it has also become somewhat longer than it was when 

 produced by the same cord when normal. I believe it to be also character- 

 istic that it occurs somewhat earlier. It will be seen that the direct effect 

 was again double. 



With regard to the two other experiments of this kind : they were both 

 made with preparations, in the normal cord of which the delay was long. 

 In the one [Exp. 18] the records taken with the second muscle showed that 



Fig. 4. — Second electrical response of the other 

 gastrocnemius of the same preparation as was 

 used for taking the records to which tig. 2 

 refers, obtained when the intact sciatic nerve 

 belonging to it was excited (Exp. 14 L). After 

 the first muscle had been used, ^ minim 0-1 per 



cent, liquor strychnise had been injected into the i 



dorsal lymph sac. [Time lines 795 per second.] 



the probable cord delay, which did not vary much, and was only just under 

 24o- in the five reflex responses which were obtained with it before 

 administering the drug, was less constant in those taken with the 

 second muscle after so doing. It was in two responses longer than 

 before ; in the next, of about the same duration ; and in the last, shorter 

 than before. In none of the responses was the reflex effect any stronger, or 

 longer, than before. In the other experiment [No. 45], after five responses 

 of the one muscle to excitation of its nerve, three of which only showed a 

 reflex effect, had been recorded with the cord normal, two records were 

 taken of the responses of the same muscle excited in the same way a 

 quarter of an hour after the administration of strychnine, and before 

 preparing the second muscle and its nerve. These both gave a reflex 

 response no stronger than before, and still much weaker than the direct 

 effect, but in a very much shorter time (probable cord delay in both of 

 them 12o- instead of the 23o- which it had been in all three responses when 



