20 ON THE NATURE AND ACTION OF THE 



US (Dr. Brunton) with the poison before it had undergone 

 decomposition seemed to show that it produced paralysis of 

 the spinal cord, of the ends of the motor nerves, and of the 

 muscles themselves. The experiments which we made together 

 with the same poison a few months afterwards, as well as with 

 other samples of poison sent from India, have not given con- 

 cordant results. We therefore propose to postpone the 

 consideration of this subject to a future paper, and to confine 

 ourselves at present to the mode in which death is produced by 

 the poison, especially in mammals. 



Somatic death, according to Bichat, may commence in the 

 brain, lungs, or heart; but the experiments of Fontana and 

 Legallois show that so long as circulation and respiration are 

 kept up, the body remains alive although the head be absent. 

 The brain is only necessary to life, inasmuch as the respiratory 

 movements cease when it is removed or destroyed, either 

 mechanically or by the action of a poison upon it. The causes 

 of somatic death are thus limited to failure of the circulation 

 and failure of the respiration. 



The long continuance of the cardiac pulsations after apparent 

 death (Experiments I, III, IV, V, IX, X) excludes failure of 

 the circulation as the usual cause of death ; and we are thus- 

 brought by exclusion to regard death caused by the bite of 

 a cobra, or by its poison introduced into the body in any other 

 way, as death from failure of the respiration, or, in other words, 

 death by asphyxia. The truth of this view is well illustrated by 

 the following experiments,* which show that the vitality of the 

 heart may be retained for a considerable time if the respiration 

 is kept up. It shows also that the convulsions which have 

 been remarked by Eussell and all subsequent observers as 

 almost always preceding death are not due so much to the 

 action of the poison itself on the nervous centres, as that they 

 depend on the irritation which is produced in them by the 

 venosity of the blood. 



* Excepting those cases in which the poison is injected into a large vein, such 

 as the jugular, and causes sudden arrest of the heart's action. 



