512 ME. J. PEIESTLET ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OE VANADIUM, 
h. m. 
3 0. Very feeble ; may be handled with impunity. Respirations rapid, and heart 
extremely feeble. 
3 15. Rolls over two or three times, as if in pain ; breathing very rapid and shallow. 
Rises, but cannot stand ; lies on its side, stretches out its fore paws, and seizes 
with them the bars of its cage. Slight opisthotonos. 
Right posterior extremity drawn forward. Great dyspnoea apparently. 
Moans. 
3 20. On touching the cornea the eye was not closed. Dead. 
Post mortem Examination. 
Divested the animal of its skin. 
Irritability of the pectoral muscles was noticed on touching them with the 
forceps. The heart was not contracting ; the right side was distended with 
blood ; on exciting the heart directly it contracted. The right ventricle was 
filled with a cherry-coloured blood, which took 3-g- minutes to coagulate. 
3 47. The left side of the heart contains very little blood. 
3 55. (Esophagus perfectly normal. 
Trachea exhibits no marked congestion. 
Lungs normal. 
Abdominal viscera exhibit distinct general congestion. 
Pancreas normal. 
Stomach exhibits, on being opened, not the slightest congestion. 
The whole of the small intestine is congested, the duodenum and jejunum 
being more distinctly so than the parts lower down. The congested intestines 
are covered with a viscid and transparent mucus. At points the intestinal 
mucous membrane appears to be the seat of ecchymosis. At the ileo-cascal 
valve there is a patch of intense congestion and a small abrasion of mucous 
membrane, the abraded part being covered with mucus. 
The cortical and pelvic parts of the kidney are quite normal ; the pyramids, 
if any thing, are slightly congested. 
Dr. Julius Dresciifeld confirmed the above observations. 
The intestines of the cat were sent to Mr. S. Carson for examination. He 
reports : — “ In the examination of the mucous membrane of the cat I did not 
succeed in finding any trace of vanadium.” 
In this experiment 250 milligrammes of V 2 0 5 caused the death of a small adult cat 
in 1 hour, symptoms developing within 3 minutes of injection. The symptoms were 
partly confirmatory of those in the preceding experiments on dogs, viz. sickness, saliva- 
tion, irregular respiration (which was noticeably rapid in this case), diarrhoea, great 
pain. In addition, nervous symptoms supervened analogous to those noticed in the case 
