458 SOURCE AND ACTION OF WOORARA POISON. 
5. Woorara is a poison when swallowed, contrary to what 
is commonly believed on that subject. 
6. It acts primarily as a stimulant. 
7. It acts secondarily, or, as it may be termed specifically, 
as a sedative, paralysing the functions of the nervous system, 
and this both locally when it is immediately applied to the 
body, and constitutionally after it enters the circulation. 
Mr. Dendy asked whether, in the cases mentioned by the 
author, in which death followed the administration of the 
poison by the mouth, there was any abrasion which might 
account for the fatal result. 
Dr. Glover believed that the different names mentioned by 
the author were only varieties of the same word, all referring 
to the same poison. He thought the views of the colonists 
as to its being composite were correct. Probably snake 
poison was one of the ingredients ; and it might have more 
to do with the preservation of the poison than the addition of 
any new properties. The poison was an antidote to strychnia; 
and as the effects of strychnia were similar to those of 
tetanus, he would suggest, whether the poison might not be 
used with advantage in cases of tetanus. With regard to 
prussic acid, he had applied the vapour of that poison to his 
eye, and it produced great vascularity, which, however, was 
soon removed. The sensation produced by prussic acid was 
that of extreme heat and inexpressible acridity. In every 
case he had seen of poisoning by prussic acid, he had found 
the stomach congested. In animals he had found somewhat 
of the same congestion, but not to the same extent as in the 
human subject. 
The Chairman, Dr. Snow, said that prussic acid vapour, 
when inhaled, felt warm and pungent; and dilute prussic 
acid, when applied to the skin, produced heat and redness. 
He believed every narcotic was more or less irritating. 
Dr. Gibb said that the Rev. Mr. Brett, a traveller in 
British Guiana, mentioned a poison which he said was 
prepared from the expressed juice of the Strycknos toxifera , 
and stated that the natives not only poisoned their arrows 
with it, but kept it under their nails, with which they could 
cause death by scratching, or dipping their fingers into any 
fluid and poisoning it. 
The Chairman said he had killed two guinea-pigs with an 
arrow that had been in England twenty-five years ; one died 
in five minutes and the other in half an hour. It was a 
remarkable circumstance, that sensibility and consciousness 
remained to the last ; the animals, however, soon lost their 
muscular power, and were in a kind of paralysis agitans. 
