106 
WOORABA POISON IN TETANUS. 
In France, experiments are being continued with the above 
agent for the cure of tetanus, but it seems without corres¬ 
ponding success. In two cases recently, in which the 
poison has been given internally, and also injected into the 
cellular tissue, it appears to have produced no beneficial 
effect whatever. The poison had been tried on animals pre¬ 
viously, and found to be very active. 
It is stated, in a work lately published by M. Reynoso— 
u There is a true and false woorara; the two are very 
different, but extremely difficult to distinguish from each 
other. The true woorara presents, moreover, several species. 
This substance is, therefore, not always obtained of the same 
strength; it comes from different countries, and is extracted 
from one or several plants, which contain one identical prin¬ 
ciple, the character of which is to cause death when injected 
into the blood, and to be innocuous when taken into the 
stomach. 
“ There is, however, one sort of woorara which acts on 
the gastric mucous membrane of certain animals, at given 
ages; which circumstance would tend to show that much 
difference exists in some samples of woorara. 
“ It is well known that it is not always prepared from the 
same plants, nor from plants of the same nature. It has 
even been shown by M. Chombrook, that one kind of 
woorara is obtained from a great number of plants, almost as 
great as the number of ingredients entering into diascordium 
or theriacum. 
te Amongst the plants used are some strychneae, but the 
rest have not as yet been determined botanically. It is 
doubtful whether snake poison is mixed with it. 
u Gunelli is the first who, in 1758, insisted upon the 
innocuous nature of woorara when taken into the stomach. 
Lacondamine and Humboldt corroborated his statements. 
Man can eat with impunity animals killed by woorara. 
Death by the poison occurs generally by paralysis of the 
motor nerves. 
“ It is of importance to try the woorara in various manners 
before administering it to a patient, and to ascertain whether 
it produces no poisonous effects when introduced into the 
stomach, and also whether it paralyses motor nerves without 
affecting the nerves of sensibility. These precautions are 
indispensable, for there is a kind of woorara which may kill 
by gastric absorption. 
t: As to the occasional inefficacy of the poison when 
