734 Th e Ptomaines and the Snake Poisons. [December, 
We need scarcely say that, whatever the “Journal of 
Science” can do towards carrying out the plan above sug- 
gested will not be wanting. 
|V1. THE PTOMAINES AND THE SNAKE 
POISONS. 
<yo 
r will doubtless be known to many of our readers that, 
as far back as 1872, the late Prof. Selmi, of Bologna, 
succeeded in obtaining from the putrescent bodies of 
man and other animals a very interesting class of substances, 
to which he gave the somewhat awkward name of Ptomaines. 
These ptomaines were found to be not ferments, organised 
beings capable of multiplication, but well-defined crystalline 
compounds, bearing a very close analogy to the organic bases 
or alkaloids existing in the vegetable world. Some of them 
were fixed and some volatile, but each and all, if introduced 
into the animal system, were capable of occasioning the 
most alarming symptoms, such as dilatation of the pupils, 
followed afterwards by contraction, irregular aCtion of the 
heart, stupor, tetanus, and finally death with the heart in 
systole. These affections, it was remarked, were very simi- 
lar to those prodnced by muscarine — the active principle of 
the more poisonous Fungi. 
The first sensation occasioned among chemists and medi- 
cal practitioners on the announcement of these results was 
one of alarm, lest in chemico-legal cases a grave mistake 
had been, or might possibly be some day, committed. Cer- 
tain of the symptoms produced by these ptomaines, such as 
the tetanic convulsions and the expansion of the pupils, are 
what might be expected to be produced by some of the 
poisonous vegetable alkaloids. The chemical reactions of 
the two classes of bodies were also found to be respectively 
similar. There was consequently the danger revealed that 
if a man was supposed to have been poisoned, his exhumed 
remains might on analytical examination yield compounds 
capable of being mistaken for the vegetable poisons, and 
that thus some person suspected of being concerned in the 
