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Dr. B. Ward Richardson on Muscular [May 29 ; 



prevented the perfection o£ the process. Recently he had been more 

 successful by evaporating blood to which saline substances had been 

 added ; he could not, at the same time, pronounce what he considered a 

 satisfactory termination of this line of experimental inquiry. 



Effect of some Chemical Agents. 



In this portion of his lecture the author detailed a series of experi- 

 mental researches with various chemical substances, organic, inorganic, 

 and intermediate, which tend to prolong the period of muscular irrita- 

 bility by diffusion through the tissues of animals recently dead. The 

 substances which suspend irritability act in two ways. Some, like chloride 

 of sodium and other soluble saline substances, act merely by holding the 

 coagulable fluid of the muscular tissue in a. continued state of fluidity ; 

 others seem to have a different action, and to hold the nervous function 

 also in suspense. The nitrite of amyl and other members of the nitrite 

 series belong to this last-named class of agents, and some of the cyanogen 

 bodies exert a similar influence. In experiments with nitrite of amyl 

 on cold-blooded animals (frogs), the author had suspended muscular irri- 

 tability for a period of nine days, and had then seen it restored to the 

 extent even of restoration of life. In one instance this restoration took 

 place after the commencement of decomposition in the web of the foot of 

 the animal. In warm-blooded animals a series of suspensions had been 

 effected by nitrites and also by cyanogens, not for so long a period, but for 

 periods of hours, in one instance extending to ten hours. 

 ; Under the head Action on Nervous Matter the author included, finally, a 

 description of certain experiments he had made to determine the direct 

 effects of some agents upon the nervous matter. In the whole series of 

 his inquiries no fact had impressed him more forcibly than this, that the 

 muscular irritability, in so far as it belongs to the muscle, may be sustained 

 for hours after the nervous excitation which calls it into spontaneous action 

 has ceased. Hereupon he infers that after death the nervous matter under- 

 goes a change of condition which, in result, is identical with that chauge in 

 muscle which we call rigor mortis. There is evidence, moreover, from some 

 rare cases, that the final inertia of nervous matter may be suspended and 

 revived, so that all the muscles may be reanimated. This point was 

 elucidated by reference to the phenomena that had recently been observed 

 by Mr. Wadsdale Watson, of Newport, Monmouthshire, on a double 

 monster, photographs of which were placed before the Society. In this 

 instance two children were born so attached that the separation of them 

 was impossible. Both lived equally for three hours after birth, and then 

 one died and remained dead for three hours, while the other lived. At 

 the end of the time named the dead child recommenced to breathe, and 

 showed other signs of restored muscular power; then it sank into a 

 second death, but at intervals of about four hours moved again; at 



ngth, twenty-three hours after its first apparent death, during a fit of 



