and its Alkaloid Conia. 395 



carried substantively with the blood to that organ, or by the 

 transmission along the nerves of a peculiar impression made on 

 the texture where it is directly applied ? I must leave the ques- 

 tion, however, in an unsettled state. Every physiologist who 

 has attended to the late researches in this field, must agree that 

 we are not at present in possession of any accurate criterion for 

 settling the question in the case of any poison which acts re- 

 motely, that is, on organs at a distance from the part where it is 

 immediately applied. That absorption is somehow connected 

 with the action of conia, will appear from its activity seeming 

 proportional to the activity of absorption in the texture with 

 which it comes in contact. This inference would be strengthen- 

 ed if we could actually detect it in the blood after death ; but 

 my observations on this head are contradictory ; for, in one in- 

 stance, where the muriate of conia was put into the stomach, and 

 secured there by a ligature on the gullet, its odour was distinctly 

 remarked after death in the general cavity of the abdomen ; while 

 in another case, where death followed in ninety seconds the applica- 

 tion of conia to the eye, not the slightest odour could be detected 

 in the blood of the heart. It would seem to me, however, to be 

 very nearly made out by a fact already mentioned, that, although 

 absorption into the blood may be a part of the chain of sequences 

 which attend the action of conia, yet this is not all ; and that the 

 poison does not act by being carried substantively with the blood 

 to the spinal chord. I allude to its tremendous rapidity when 

 injected into a vein. That it acts more swiftly in this way than 

 in any other, is evidence enough perhaps that it enters the blood 

 before it operates. But farther, its effect, when thus introduced, is 

 too swift for its action to depend entirely on the blood becoming- 

 poisoned, and itself acting on the spine ; for it is impossible that, 

 in three seconds, which was certainly the limit of interval when all 

 voluntary movement and respiration had ceased, the poison could 

 have passed with the blood from the femoral vein to the heart, 

 from the heart to the extreme ramifications of the pulmonary ar- 



VOL. XIII. PART II. 3 E 



