CURARE 



345 



anaesthetics and narcotics in his experiments, not so 

 much to allay pain, for the experiments can hardly 

 be called painful — the animals were killed by an 

 instantaneous method of injection — but that the 

 nerve-cells of the brain might be caught and fixed 

 at the moment of contraction or expansion of the 

 varicosities of their terminal filaments. The pur- 

 pose of the chloroform, ether, morphia, and chloral, 

 that he used, was to produce diverse conditions, 

 such as obtain during cerebral action or inaction. 

 There was no operation save that necessary for the 

 injection into a vessel, and then instantaneous 

 death. In animals that had been excited by 

 morphia, as some men and women are excited by 

 it, the brain-cells under the microscope still regis- 

 tered the mental state at the moment of death. It 

 happens, now and again, that a dog is not influenced 

 by morphia, is excited, not narcotised, by it. But 

 this is altogether exceptional ; an animal in such a 

 condition could not be used for experiment ; and 

 the physiologist has other anaesthetics. Except in 

 these rare cases, animals take morphia well, and 

 are profoundly influenced by it. 



Curare is not an anaesthetic under the Act. In 

 1875-76, the evidence as to its action was somewhat 

 unsettled ; but most of the witnesses held that it 

 acted only on the motor system, and had no 

 anaesthetic influence. It was therefore ruled out 

 by the Act ; and its use was thus defined in 1899, 

 by the Home Secretary : — 



"It is illegal to use curare as an anaesthetic. It 

 is often used in addition to anaesthetics, for very 



