PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL AGENTS UPON BLOOD. 
721 
lungs did not act. The respiratory movements ceased. But the heart went on beating, 
and continued to do so for at least three or four minutes after all attempts at respiratory 
efforts had entirely stopped. 
On opening the animal, the heart was found distended with fluid blood. The blood 
coagulated after its withdrawal from the body. On puncturing the right ventricle, a 
globule or two of air escaped ; but the organ contained no frothy air, nor was there any 
reason to suppose that the air had been injected during the operation. On the con- 
trary, it appeared as if it had been separated from the blood itself, as occasionally occurs 
in cases where the blood-vessels are unopened. The urine of the animal contained a 
large amount of the poison. It is on the above grounds that I consider that the proto- 
sulphate of iron merits the title of a respiratory poison. This w 7 ill be made still more 
apparent by comparing the foregoing with the result of the following experiment. 
2nd. As regards corrosive sublimate, a cardiac poison. 
Into the femoral vein of a pregnant bitch was injected an aqueous solution of five 
grains of corrosive sublimate. In ten seconds the animal cried as if in pain ; in sixty 
she became delirious ; and in three and a quarter minutes after the operation was com- 
menced the heart stopped. Neither was there an impulse to be felt on the application 
of the finger to the femoral artery, nor a sound to be heard on the application of the 
ear to the thoracic walls. The animal, however, still respired, and continued to make 
gasping respiratory efforts for thirty seconds more. They then ceased. In three-quar- 
ters of a minute after the cessation of respiration the thorax was opened, with the view 
of ascertaining the conditon of the heart. It was found still ; and neither the stimulus 
of the cold an, of the point of the knife, nor of a feeble current from the galvanic 
forceps caused it to pulsate. 
Ten minutes after death a stronger galvanic current was applied to the organ, but 
even then the portions between the points of the forceps alone contracted. No general 
pulsation could be reinduced. The foetuses were alive and moving about in the uterus 
twelve and a half minutes after the death of the mother. 
The corrosive sublimate had acted specially upon the heart ; for the spontaneous 
peristaltic movements of the intestines were well marked, and continued to be so for 
twenty-two minutes. The thoracic muscles also contracted spontaneously, with a 
flickering movement, for no less than thirty minutes. They even responded to the 
direct application of galvanism for two hours and thirty-five minutes after the death of 
the animal. 
Galvanism applied to the brachial plexus fifteen minutes after death caused violent 
muscular contractions in the limb supplied by it; yet, as was before said, the heart 
failed to respond to mechanical and galvanic stimuli applied within a single minute 
after death. 
It appears to me, therefore, that corrosive sublimate merits the name of a cardiac 
poison quite as much as either aconitine or antiar. 
