GALAOTOTOXISMUS. 217 



time when the others were taken ill and for some months before that 

 time, was evidently a tidy one. This was shown by their personal 

 appearance and by the clothing and bedding ; but the house in which 

 they lived was old, and much decayed. One corner of one of the 

 rooms had been transformed into a buttery, and in this the food was 

 kept on shelves. On account of the more frequent scouring de- 

 manded by that part of the house the boards constituting the floor 

 had rotted away, and a second layer had been placed over the original 

 floor. Between these two floors there was found a great mass of 

 moist, decomposing matter, the accumulation of years, which the 

 broom could not reach. When this floor was taken up, a peculiar, 

 nauseating odor was observable, and was sufficient to cause actual 

 vomiting in one of the persons engaged in the examination. Tyro- 

 toxicon was found in milk which had been used by the family and 

 had stood in this room, and it was also produced in sterilized milk 

 by inoculating it with bits of earth taken from between the floors. 

 An autopsy held on one of the fatal cases showed as the most marked 

 abnormality tightly constricted areas of the large intestine such as is 

 sometimes seen in lead poisoning, and which had been quite gener- 

 ally observed in the lower animals experimentally killed by the ad- 

 ministration of tyrotoxicon. Novy tested a cold-water extract of 

 the finely-divided intestines for ptomains. The fluid, which was 

 acid in reaction was filtered, then neutralized with sodium carbon- 

 ate, and shaken with ether. The ether, after separation, was re- 

 moved and allowed to evaporate spontaneously. The residue was 

 dissolved in water and extracted again with ether. This ether resi- 

 due gave the chemical reactions for tyrotoxicon and a portion of it 

 was administered to a kitten about two months old. Within one- 

 half hour the kitten began to retch and soon it vomited, and within 

 the next three hours it vomited as many as five times. There was 

 no purging but the retching and heavy breathing, with evidences of 

 prostration, continued more or less marked for two days, after which 

 the animal slowly recovered. A quantity of fresh milk was divided 

 into five portions of one quart each, placed in bottles which had 

 been thoroughly cleansed, and treated in the following manner : No, 

 1 consisted of the milk only, and was employed as a control test. 

 No. 2 was mixed with a drachm of vomited matter. No. 3 was 

 treated with a portion of the contents of the stomach. No. 4 was 

 treated with an aqueous extract of the intestine. No. 5 was treated 

 with a small portion of the soil which had been taken from the floor 

 of the buttery, stirred up with water. 



These bottles were placed in an air-bath and kept at a tempera- 

 ture of from 25° to 30° for twenty-four hours, and then each was 

 tested for tyrotoxicon, the result in No. 1 being negative, while in 

 all of the others it was positive. These tests were both chemical 

 and physiological. All the samples yielded a non-poisonous base 



