Sir Thomas Richard Fraser. 



xiii 



drugs are capable, and of the therapeutic employments which are thus 

 indicated. His lectures, no less than his devotion to research, were calculated 

 beyond merely instructing to produce a stimulating and enduring impression 

 upon students in the third year of their curriculum. Many of them came 

 into contact with him again at a later period of study in. the clinical wards 

 and lecture theatre of the Infirmary. Here Prof. Fraser was in a sphere 

 entirely congenial to him ; his minute attention to detail, thoroughness of 

 method, and wide experience rendering him a diagnostician of high order, 

 whilst his intimate acquaintance with the potentiality of therapeutic agencies 

 gave peculiar point to the line of treatment which he advocated. 



Pharmacological research, to which he was devoted, occupied a large share 

 €f Prof. Fraser's time, and brief reference may be made here to some of the 

 directions in which it was prosecuted. An investigation into the action of 

 Strophanthus hisjndus (Komb^) is closely associated with his name. The toxic 

 properties of the plant had been known to travellers, who had ascertained that 

 certain South African tribes used arrows, both in warfare and in the chase, 

 which had been anointed with an extract derived from Komb^. Some of 

 these poisoned arrow-heads, having been sent home, came into the hands of 

 Sharpey about 1862, who recognised the extract upon the points as having 

 the effect of a cardiac poison, whilst three years later Hilton Fagge, with 

 Stephenson, expressed a confirmatory opinion, grouping the, new prison with 

 digitalis and squill. The further investigation which was to result in the 

 addition of a new and valuable therapeutic agent was taken up at this point 

 by Dr. Fraser, who, in 1870, published certain results which he had obtained 

 with the poison from the arrow-heads ; whilst, many years later (in 1885), at 

 a meeting of the British Medical Association, held at Cardiff, he indicated 

 the directions in which the activities of the drug might be used with 

 advantages therapeutically. 



In two extensive papers which appeared in the ' Transactions of the Eoyal 

 Society of Edinburgh ' in 1890 and 1892 respectively, he gives an exhaustive 

 account of strophanthus as used as an arrow poison, discussing also its 

 botanical features, especially the morphology of the seeds — as the source of 

 the extract, and indicating the properties of the active glucosideal constituent, 

 strophanthin, which he had separated from them. Whilst recognising the 

 similarity of action which strophanthus and digitalis produce upon the 

 heart, he emphasised the relatively feeble effect of the former upon the blood- 

 vessels, those of the frog contracting not at all to extract solutions of 

 1 : 20,000, and but slightly to 1 : 1000. He also drew attention to the 

 ansesthetic action of the glucoside on the conjunctival surface. 



Many years later, another Strophanthus (S. sarmentosus) was investigated 

 by him, together with Alister Mackenzie, the results published in 1911 

 establishing the parallel activity possessed by it with that of the S. hispidus. 



Poisoned arrows in general had very naturally become objects of interest 

 to him, and many specimens from widely separated sources found their way 

 to the Edinburgh laboratories, and there were subjected to examination. 



