W 6 
9-40. Administered several strong electric shocks. It 
discharged urine violently and shortly after died, probably from 
the shocks. 
— A toad sound and unopened, had a normal beat of 23 in 15 
seconds. 
At 10-30, 2 mras. Antiaris was injected. Beats 21 
IO ‘ 37 > >> ,, „ „ 20 
10-42. ,, ,, , }} 18 
/. — In order to see if the poison was destroyed by heat, some 
Antiaris latex was boiled in a test-tube. It emitted a smell of 
burnt india-rubber. 
Injected three mms. into the thigh of a toad at 9-25. At 9-45, 
toad much affected. It does not move, but lies on its back, and 
does not attempt to recover itself. The pupils are contracted. 
There are no spasms, but a complete loss of motor power in the 
legs, the fore-legs first. It died at 10 a.m. 
This experiment shows, I think, that boiling greatly increases 
the rapidity of the action. All writers state that the Sakais boil 
the decoction till it becomes thick before using it. 
Newbold (Trans. Roy. Soc. 1837, p. 427) in describing the poi- 
son, gives an account of inoculating a pup with one of the arrows 
of the Aborigines, the effects of which closely resemble those in 
my experiment on the dog. It was struck in the right hip, the 
arrow penetrating only a quarter of an inch. Six minutes later 
“ it demonstrated signs of uneasiness, yawned and moaned. In 
“ io| minutes it grew sick, vomited the contents of the stomach 
“ and continued at intervals bringing up small quantities of a 
“white frothy liquid. In 16 minutes the muscles of the chest 
“ and diaphragm were powerfully excited ; slight convulsive 
“ twitchings in the legs. In 20 minutes it fell on its side, foamed 
“ much at the mouth, again got on its legs and struggled violent- 
“ ly as if to get loose. In 23 minutes it was still foaming at the 
“ mouth and had an involuntary alvine evacuation, then fell 
“down after painful retching” and continued this, becoming 
gradually weaker till, in 37 minutes, it died strongly convulsed. 
The post-mortem examination showed a frothy saliva-like 
fluid in the stomach, the gall-bladder distended with bile, the in- 
testines unusually pale. In the cavity of the thorax on each 
side were several drachms of serous fluid. In this experiment, 
as apparently in others by Newbold, the action of the poison was 
very slow, probably on account of the small amount of the drug 
injected, otherwise the action was quite similar. 
One more experiment I made I will mention. A tadpole was 
put into a watch-glass of water, and a little of the Antiaris 
latex injected into the tail by a prick. Under the microscope, 
the blood-vesseles could be seen to become intensely congest- 
ed, and the circulation in the tail gradually ceased, the capil- 
laries of the tail becoming choked with corpuscles. It appear- 
to me that this was due to the contraction of the capillaries. 
