ON ANASTHETICS. 241 
their true causes. (2) The injection of cocaine or its derivatives may 
lead to dangerous or fatal symptoms by (a) direct toxicity; (b) the 
introduction of septic organisms into the circulation through improper 
sterilisation of injecting appliances; (c) lacerating and reducing the 
vitality and power of recovery of inflamed tissues into which the anal- 
gesic solution may have been forced, with the result that sloughing or 
necrosis follows; and (d) ‘ the injected fluid, not only driving out the 
blood and lymph, but also dispersing pathogenic organisms into the 
tissues and even into the general circulation’ (Gibbs). (3) It is hence 
clear that without proper medical or dental education and training the 
risks to the public of such injections are very great. 
Electromotive Phenomena in Plants.—Report of the Committee, 
consisting of Dr. A. D. WaLLER (Chairman), Mrs. WALLER 
(Secretary), Professors J. B. FARMER and VELEY, and Dr. 
F. O’B. Evtison. (Drawn up by the Chairman.) 
In previous reports we have stated that the presence of a ‘ blaze- 
current’ is a sign that a given vegetable tissue is alive and also how 
much it is alive, i.e., that it is a quantitative as well as a qualitative test 
of the living state. 
In a recent number of the ‘ Annals of Botany’! W. Laurence 
Balls, after a laborious attempt to estimate the vitality of cotton 
plants by means of this test, comes to the conclusion that the method, 
although holding good as a ‘ death-test,’ does not seem to be a ‘ vitality- 
test ’ in a quantitative sense, and that it failed of its object with regard 
to the testing of root samples, because the small roots give the most 
insignificant results. 
Mr. Balls has very courageously attacked a new and difficult 
problem with very inadequate resources, i.e., with a galvanometer of 
22 ohms resistance, with induction currents of excessive strength, and 
with a circuit of such intricacy as to make it difficult to verify direction 
of excitation and response, and impossible to obtain systematic data. 
I think it is very much to Mr. Balls’s credit, and incidentally a very 
encouraging sign of the applicability of the blaze-test, that it should 
have been possible to obtain any result whatever under such conditions. 
And I venture to forecast that the tenacity of purpose that has enabled 
Mr. Balls to discover by his apparatus that the blaze-test is a death-test 
will, if he pursues the inquiry under more favourable conditions, enable 
him to discover further that the test can be employed as a ‘ measure of 
vitality ’ in particular cases more or less difficult. We have hitherto 
applied the test quantitatively only in cases selected as being the most 
easy and best adapted to the acquisition of comparable numbers by the 
fewest number of trials, e.g., to seeds fresh and old, to parts of plants 
presumably more or less active, or of which the activity has been 
1“ Apparent Fallacies of Electrical Response in Cotton Plants, by W. 
Laurence Balls, M.A., Annals of Botany, January 1913, p. 103. 
1913. R 
