238 IMPORTANGE TO TOXICOLOGIST. 



This substance was found to be highly poisonous, inasmuch as 7 

 eg. injected subcutaneously into a large frog produced instantaneous 

 death, and 44 mg. given to a pigeon caused a similar result. On 

 account of its poisonous properties the jury of medical experts de- 

 cided that the substance was a vegetable alkaloid, notwithstanding 

 the fact that Otto's experiments demonstrated that this could not be 

 true. 



Brouardel and Boutmy found in the body of a woman who had 

 died, after suffering with ten other persons, from choleraic symp- 

 toms after eating of a stuffed goose, a base which gave the odor of 

 coniin and the same reactions with gold chlorid and iodin in potassium 

 iodid, etc., as coniin. The same base was found in the remainder 

 of the goose. It did not give a red coloration with the vapor of 

 hydrochloric acid, and it did not form butyric acid on oxidation, 

 and, although it was poisonous, it did not induce in frogs the 

 symptoms of coniin poisoning. 



Selmi repeatedly found coniin-like substances in decomposing 

 animal tissue. By distilling an alcoholic extract from a cadaver, 

 acidifying the distillate with hydrochloric acid, evaporating, treating 

 the residue with barium hydrate and ether, and allowing the ether to 

 evaporate spontaneously, he obtained a residue of volatile bases, the 

 greater portion of which consisted of trimethylamin. After remov- 

 ing the trimethylamin the residue had the odor of mouse urine. 

 Later, Selmi obtained an unmistakable coniin odor from a chloro- 

 form extract of the viscera of a person who had been buried six 

 months, and in another case ten months after burial. Two or three 

 drops of an aqueous solution of the alkaline residue of the chloro- 

 form extract, allowed to evaporate on a glass plate, gave off such 

 a penetrating odor that Selmi was compelled to withdraw from close 

 proximity to the substance, and the odor imparted to his hands 

 in testing with the general alkaloidal reagents remained for half an 

 hour. 



An aqueous solution of a ptomain obtained by Selmi by extraction 

 with ether, according to the Stas-Otto method, from the unde- 

 composed parts of a cadaver, had no marked odor, but after being 

 kept for a long time in a sealed tube it not only gave off a coniin 

 odor, but the vapor turned red litmus paper blue. Again, the sul- 

 phate of a ptomain obtained from putrid egg-albumin, on standing, 

 formed in two layers, one of which was a golden-yellow liquid, which 

 on treatment with barium hydrate gave off ammonia and later the odor 

 of coniin. Since butyric and acetic acids were formed by the oxida- 

 tion of this base, Selmi concluded that it was real coniin or methyl- 

 coniin, and that it was formed by the oxidation of certain fixed 

 ptomains, or by the action of different amido bases on volatile fatty 

 acids. The substance, which was found by Sonnenschein in a 

 criminal trial in East Prussia and which was believed by that 



