TREATMENT OF TETANUS BY WOURALI POISON. 651 
prise to me, as Mr. Gamgee is a great experimentalist, that he 
did not adopt some such expedient. I have heard of his 
spaying several cows in this neighbourhood, by introducing his 
hand into the vagina, and with a cutting instrument break 
down and cut off internally both ovaries, which were brought 
away, and although these operations have not been so safe and 
successful as promised in regard to life, or in prolonging and 
increasing the lacteal secretion, in as much as they proceed 
upon, as I think, an erroneous principle, and are contrary 
to the established laws of nature, I nevertheless am of opinion 
that his ingenuity lost an excellent opportunity of showing, 
that the object of the veterinary art is never to destroy , without 
first exhausting every practicable means of saving life. 
I am, Sirs, &c. 
To the Editors of the ‘ Veterinarian 
Pacts and Observations. 
THE TREATMENT OE TETANUS BY WOURALI POISON. 
In our last we inserted M. Vella’s experiments with the 
above agent. Since then, M. Velpeau has tried it in a case of 
tetanus in the human subject, by injecting into the cellular 
tissue a solution of the poison, beginning with the tenth part 
of a grain of the wourali, and increasing it until the later in¬ 
jections contained as much as half a grain. No particular 
effect was produced by it, and the patient died eight hours 
after. 
In the Lancet appears a letter from Dr. Harley, in which, 
after recapitulating M. Vella’s statements, he says, i( You may, 
perhaps, remember that in 1856 I pointed out, in the pages 
of your journal,* the antagonistic action of wourali and 
strychnine—citing three experiments to show that these two 
substances have the power of reciprocally neutralizing the 
effects of each other, according as the one or the other poison 
is in excess. The conclusion I then drew from my experiments 
was, that wourali might be used as an antidote for strychnine. 
Since 1856 I have frequently repeated these experiments, and 
on several occasions have succeeded, by means of wourali, in 
* ‘The Lancet,’ vol. i, 1856, pp. 619, 647. Art. “Notes of Three 
Lectures on the Physiological Action of Strychnia.” 
