34 
SUMMARY. 
Control. Acetanilide mixtures. 
Note. — T he figures in this table refer to the number of days from the beginning of the experiment until 
the death of the animal. 
As will be noted, the figures in the above summary show that mice 
fed on acetanihde lived almost two times as long as those fed on a 
mixture of acetanihde and caffeine. This indicates that instead of 
any antagonism, caffeine markedly increases the toxicity of acetani- 
lide when given to white mice with their food, although caffeine itself 
is scarcely toxic at all even when given in doses from two to four times 
greater. 
Unfortunately, in these and in all the other experiments the mice 
lost weight quite rapidly, so that starvation may be argued as a 
partial reason for the animal’s death. This seems to be an insufficient 
reason, however, as there is no relation between the loss in weight 
and the death of the animal, some decreasing in weight as much as 
50 per cent before death, others decreasing only 10 to 20 per cent. 
A more important argument is furnished by certain experiments 
in which a record was kept of the number of cakes each mouse ate. 
Excepting in those cases where the animal died vdthin the first two 
or three days, there was approximately the same average amount 
of cake eaten per day, whether the cakes contained acetanilide alone 
or a mixture of acetanilide and caffeine. The figures covering this 
point are as follows: Average amount of cake eaten per day — 
acetanilide, 0.51 per cent; of mixture containing 0.020 gram caffeine 
citrate, 0.62 per cent; of mixture containing 0.010 gram caffeine 
citrate, 0.69 per cent. In other words, the animal eating the most 
cake per day, grouping the mixtures containing caffeine, died in the 
