240 IMPORTANCE TO TOXIGOLOGIST. 



one part of strychnin in forty thousand parts of water is intensely 

 bitter. Selmi also held that many ptomams give reactions similar to 

 strychnin with iodin in hydriodic acid and with hydriodic acid alone. 

 He also held that the physiological properties of this substance were 

 such that it could not be strychnin. It could hardly have been as- 

 pidospermin, which reacts with sulphuric acid and potassium bichro- 

 mate similarly to strychnin, because quebracho bark, in which this alka- 

 loid is found was not at that time used as a medicine or known in Italy. 



Ptomains giving reactions similar to those of strychnin, and also 

 causing tetanic spasms, have been found in decomposed corn-meal, 

 and Selmi obtained one of these substances which differed from 

 strychnin inasmuch as it could not be extracted with ether. 



Lombroso named the poisonous substance found in decomposed 

 corn-meal " pellagrocein," but this is a mixture of ptomains, some of 

 which produce narcosis and paralysis, and others induce the symp- 

 toms of nicotin poisoning instead of the spasms caused by strychnin. 



Morphin-like Substances. — In the Sonzogna trial at Cremona, 

 Italy, the experts seem to have confounded a ptomam with morphin. 

 This substance was removed from either alkaline or acid solutions 

 with ether, but could be extracted with amylic alcohol. It reduced 

 iodic acid, but in its other reactions, also in its physiological proper- 

 ties, it bore no resemblance to morphin. In frogs it arrested the 

 heart in systole, which is said never to happen in poisoning with 

 morphin. It failed to give both the ferric chlorid and the Pellagri 

 test for morphin. 



In the same body there was found a substance which was ex- 

 tracted from alkaline solutions with ether, and which gave, with 

 hydrochloric acid and a few drops of sulphuric acid, on the applica- 

 tion of heat, a reddish residue similar to that obtained by the same 

 reagents with codein, but in its other reactions it did not resemble 

 this alkaloid. 



Many of the tests for morphin employed by toxicologists are fal- 

 lacious. In the examination of a stomach and part of a liver, sent 

 from Lincoln, Neb., Vaughan, following the method of Dragendorff, 

 obtained in the amylic alcohol extract from alkaline solution a resi- 

 due that gave with more or less distinctness all the principal color 

 tests for morphin ; but failing to obtain crystals that could be identi- 

 fied as those of this alkaloid, the absence of morphin was reported. 

 Haines, working with the same material, obtained similar reactions ; 

 he also was unable to secure the crystals and made a negative report. 

 Afterward, it was quite positively shown that death had been caused 

 in this case by a blow on the back of the head and that no morphin 

 or other drug had been administered. 



In the Buchanan case in New York, the symptoms as sworn to by 

 the attending physician clearly were not those of morphin, and all 



