26 INDIAN SNAKE POISONS, 



2.20 P.M. Very slight reflex movement. 



2.45 P.M. Passing a current through the spinal cord, 

 with interruption produced by means of a key, the 

 muscles of both legs distinctly contracted at 0*5 volt. 



2.52 P.M. Spinal cord, mechanically stimulated, gav» 

 distinct twitchings in both poisoned and non-poisoned 

 legs. 



In all these experiments, as long as the cord possessed 

 power at all, contraction could be excited in either leg„ 

 provided the nerves had not been mechanically injured, 

 which would rather indicate that the nerves retained 

 theirirritability, at the same time that the excitability 

 of the cord was exceedingly quickly lost. Of course a 

 good deal of allowance must be made for the difference; 

 in the method of excitation pursued in the two series of 

 experiments. But though the above experiments go to 

 prove that the excitabihty of the motor nerves lasted as 

 long as that of the spinal cord, yet the difference in 

 the excitability between the two sides in the former 

 experiments showed how powerfully paralysing cobra- 

 poison is. These experiments, then, tend to show that 

 the spinal nervous system is rapidly paralysed by cobra- 

 poison, but that the terminations of the motor nerves 

 only suffer, pari passu, with the cord itself, and the 

 poison has no elective affinity for the ends of the nerves. 

 Nor are the results of the experiments of Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer and Dr. Brunton incompatible with this view. 

 For when one , thigh of the subject of the experiment 



