EXTRACTS FROM A LECTURE ON STRYCHNINE. 
721 
METROPOLIS WATER SUPPLY. 
The supply of water to the Metropolis has now reached 
the enormous quantity of 81 million gallons daily, it having 
been nearly doubled in the space of six years. The average 
daily supply of water for all purposes, which in 1850 was 
164 gallons per house, is now, in 1856, 246 gallons per 
house. Seven millions sterling have been expended in the 
water-works of the Metropolis. 
EXTRACTS FROM A LECTURE ON STRYCHNINE. 
By Stevenson Macadam, Ph.D., F.R.S.E. 
[Continued from p. 674.) 
The main difference between the possibility of detecting organic poisons, 
in contradistinction to inorganic, lies in the more ready and irretrievable 
changes which happen to organic matter in its passage through, or retention 
in, the animal system. A poison, such as phosphorus, may be oxidized into 
phosphoric acid, or arsenious acid may become sulpharsenious acid, and yet 
they, are easily recognisable. We can test the new compound, the product 
of the change, or, if the operator choose, he can extract therefrom the 
original substance, and examine the poison itself. But it is not so with the 
majority of the organic poisons when they suffer a change ; and in this re- 
spect, strychnine does not stand alone. The animal is an oxidizing agent 
of the most powerful kind ; and if it can so far succeed as to link a few 
atoms of oxygen to the complex molecule of strychnine, no known process 
can be resorted to for the purpose of sifting and reuniting the strychnine 
components in a strychnine atom. The possibility of the oxidation and 
consequent destruction of a sensible amount of strychnine by the animal, is 
still an open question ; and all that is at present advanced is, that the 
animal may possess that power in a slight degree. 
Granting, then, that strychnine, like other organic compounds, may be 
liable to change in the animal organism, the important question arises, will 
strychnine, which has been administered in minimum doses, in quantity just 
sufficient to cause harm to an animal, and by-and-by, in days or weeks, to 
kill it, will that amount of strychnine be retained in the system of the 
animal, in such form as to render its detection possible ? On this point I 
have an experiment to adduce. A large-sized terrier dog was fed for two 
weeks on the flesh of the horse previously referred to, and every day during 
this period he partook of two pounds of muscle. The terrier dog lived 
and thrived on the flesh, and did not betray the faintest shadow of tetanic 
symptoms. In this respect he agreed with the maggots which throve so 
well on the putrefying duck. Of course, there may be something in being 
born in a strychnine district, such as the maggots were, but this cannot be 
said in favour of the terrier dog living on the flesh of the horse. Inci- 
xxix. 92 
