(356 EXPERIMENTS RELATING TO CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 
A very curious experiment has served to show the facility 
with which miasms enter the blood through the respiratory 
passages. For a long time it has been the opinion of M. 
Magendie, that the pulmonary mucous membrane did not 
extend through the extreme ramifications of the bronchi; an 
assertion rebutted by several anatomists, on the score of the 
mucous linings of canals extending throughout these cavities, 
and that, if the pulmonary membrane could not anatomically 
be proved to do so, it was on account of its extreme tenuity. 
In proof, however, that his opinion was well founded, M. 
Magendie experimented with a virulent poison called curare , 
which was known to take no effect on mucous surfaces, but 
to pass through the stomach and intestines unaltered in its 
properties, although when placed in contact with a vascular 
surface, the smallest particle of it occasions instant death. 
With this he smeared the interior of the bronchial tubes 
without producing any effect; though when he reduced the 
poison to very fine powder, and contrived the gradual intro¬ 
duction of it into the air-cells, where it underwent solution, 
then its poisonous effects became manifest, furnishing con¬ 
firmatory evidence of M. Magendie’s theory of their anatomy. 
A proof, as has appeared all along, that respiration is the 
principal and the most common channel through which 
miasms enter the blood, is, that animal matters in a state of 
putrefaction, introduced into the stomach, do not prove de¬ 
structive. Some carnivora, the dog and the wolf, are fond 
of putrid flesh. Certain men have the same craving. There 
are some who live on human flesh. And we know, by many, 
game that is called high is preferred to that which is fresh. 
If human industry has for a long time made us acquainted 
w ith the means of neutralising the effects of putrefaction, the 
stomach has ever possessed this property in an eminent 
degree, and this, doubtless, is the explanation of our being 
able to eat viands in a putrid condition. M. Magendie has 
made this the subject of some very curious experiments. 
Fifteen grains of blood in a state of putrefaction, giving off 
ammonia and sulphuretted hydrogen, was injected into the 
jugular vein of a dog. The effect was great disturbance of 
all the functions—of the brain, the circulation, and locomo¬ 
tion—and the animal died in twelve hours. Here, death 
could not be owing either to the ammonia or the sulphu¬ 
retted h} 7 drogen contained in so small a quantity of blood. 
A second experiment is, introducing underneath the skin of 
a dog a couple of drachms of putrid water, in which stale fish 
had been. The simple .absorption of this proved sufficient to 
bring on rapid death. In both these cases, after death, the 
