34 SNAKE-POISON AND ITS ACTION. 



a time. But the strychnine is injected and mark the 

 change. It courses quickly to every one of the 

 sleepers, for whom it also has an affinity, but the direct 

 opposite to that of the deadly venom that has over- 

 powered them. It touches them as if with the wand of a 

 magician and orders them to awake and do their work. 

 There is no disobeying the mandate, for it is founded 

 on one of nature's unchangeable laws. Almost immedi- 

 ately the cells begin their work again, the life streams 

 flow afresh, coma and paralysis vanish and within a 

 very short time the subject of this beautiful experiment 

 is snatched from the brink of the grave and restored 

 to life and health. 



The phenomena of sleep and coma as the result of 

 a poison acting as a depressant of motor nerve force 

 afford food for some interesting speculations, w^hich, 

 however, as more concerning the psychologist, the 

 writer can only glance at here. It is evident that in 

 the highest or psycho-motor centres, the organs of 

 thought arid of consciousness, the paresis of the lower 

 centres assumes the form of sleep, and paralysis that 

 of coma. Sleep, as a partial, and coma, as a complete, 

 obliteration of thought and consciousness must, there- 

 fore, be intimately connected with motor nerve 

 function, sleep being a reduction, coma a suppression 

 of this function, or a suspension of thought. Ideation, 

 to use J. S. Mill's very appropriate term for the 

 thought process, appears to be effected by motor nerve 

 currents, or, at all events, to be accompanied by them 

 and suspended with their suspension. The thinking 



