316 
Pharmaceutical Society of London. 
dose ; and the symptoms observed agree well with the description 
given by Mr. James Drummond, in his account of the effects pro¬ 
duced upon the cattle in the country where the plant grows wild, 
where he says, “ the finest and strongest animals are the first to 
perish: breathing seems difficult: they stagger, fall, and die.” 
It was remarked also in some experiments mentioned by him, 
that animals poisoned with this plant did not the less surely die 
because they ate, and appeared quite unaffected for some time 
after taking it. He states, that ten sheep and goats which ate 
of the plant all died in from three to five hours—a period 
approaching very nearly to that of the duration of poisoning in 
the second experiment mentioned above. 
Many circumstances lead to the negative inference that the 
poison is devoid of any acrid or irritant property; purging is 
not mentioned by Mr. Drummond as one of the symptoms ob¬ 
served, and it did not appear to be present in any of the rabbits; 
the fullness of the stomach and colon after death, and the 
absence of any signs of inflammation within those organs go far 
to prove that they could not have suffered from any irritating- 
agent. I may add, that the operation of the poison seemed un¬ 
accompanied by pain, and that when tasted it produced no sen¬ 
sation of acridity either on the tongue or in the fauces. 
That the poison has no effect in preventing coagulation of the 
blood is evident from the clots found in both auricles after death. 
The state of the heart observed in the two more protracted cases 
appears to me somewhat remarkable. In these the ventricles on 
both sides were found firmly contracted and empty, or very 
nearly empty, while the auricles, both left and right, were dis¬ 
tended with blood, which had the same venous character in both. 
The equal distention of the two auricles, as well as the uncon¬ 
gested state of the lungs themselves, seems to show that the 
blood was freely transmitted through those organs, yet the iden¬ 
tity of its colour on both sides of the heart indicates a want of the 
natural oxygenating influence; unless it be thought that the time 
which elapsed between the death of the animal and the exami¬ 
nation of its body, was sufficient to allow of arterial blood in the 
left auricle assuming the darker colour of venous blood. 
