534 BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 
double tests, because they had first the obtainment of a pe- 
culiar crystalline compound of strychnine, which was after- 
wards made to develop the characteristic effects by whicl 
strychnine is recognised. Mr. Horsley next related a series 
of experiments which hehad made on animals with strychnine, 
and entered into the probable reasons for its non-detection 
in certain cases, although (as he had just shown before) a 
method of detecting infinitesimal quantities of strychnia by 
tests. He procured three rats, at seven o’clock p.m., he (as- 
sisted by Dr. Wright) gave each rat a quarter of a grain of 
powdered strychnia, and two hours afterwards a quarter and 
half a grain more to one of the three. Next morning at 
four o’clock they were all alive, and had eaten food (bread 
and milk) in the night, but at seven, or a few minutes after, 
they w 7 ere all dead. The longest liver was one of the rats 
that had only had a quarter of a grain. In about three hours 
afterw ards he applied the usual test, but could not detect the 
least indication of strychnine in the precipitate. There was, 
moreover, a total absence of bitterness in all the liquors. He 
tried every part of the bodies of the rats with the like results. 
What, then, became of the strychnine ? Had it been de- 
composed in the organism, and its nature changed, as Baron 
Liebig intimated? As to the non-detection of strychnine, he 
thought it not improbable that the strychnine might have 
become imbibed into the albumen or other solid matter, and 
so abstracted from the fluid, forming by coagulation (say, for 
instance, in the blood) a more or less insoluble albuminate. 
This idea had occurred to him from noticing the coagulation 
(say, for instance, in the blood) of a more or less in- 
soluble albuminate. Further, from noticing the coagu- 
lation of the glairy white of egg with strychnine, and 
the fact of his not recovering the full quantity of the 
alkaloid whenever he had introduced it. At any rate, it 
merited consideration. In his second experiment he ad- 
ministered three quarters of a grain of strychnia to a w 7 ild 
rat, but the animal evinced little of the effects of poison, and 
it w r as purposely killed after five days. His third experi- 
ment w r as with two grains of strychnia, administered as a 
pill w 7 rapped up in blotting paper, to a dog — a full-sized 
terrier. It was apparently quite w T ell for five hours, when 
the operator went to bed, but was found dead next morning, 
but lying apparently in the most natural position for a dog 
asleep. When taken up, blood flowed freely from its mouth. 
« On opening the animal (continued Mr. Horsley) I found the 
right ventricle of the heart empty of blood, whilst the left 
was full, some of the blood being liquid and some clotted. 
