200 
REVIEW OF BIOLOGY. 
earth was covered with a coat of pure white, silicated gravel, 
and the flower-pots well enveloped with sheets of paper. 
In a few days the worms were seen passing their excre¬ 
ments upon the gravelly coating, from which they were gath¬ 
ered, avoiding all surrounding contamination. The inocu¬ 
lation of the excrements to guinea pigs gave rise to the 
development of well-marked generalized tuberculosis. 
Conclusion: Lumbricoids may carry to the surface of 
the ground, with the products of their digestion, bacilli which 
are possessed of all their virulent properties.— Rec. de Med. Vet. 
PHYSIOLOCICAL ACTION OF SPERMINE. 
By Al. Poehl. 
The author has studied the chemical composition of the 
Brown-Sequard liquor, and has found, with the albuminoid, 
lecithine, mecleine and other leucomaines, a sensible propor¬ 
tion of spermine. This last seems to be the active principle 
of the liquor; it is found in the testicles, the prostate, the 
ovaries and the pancreas (where it is abundant), in the thyroid 
body, the thymus gland, the spleen and the normal blood. 
Numerous experiments made with pure spermine in the 
chlorhydrate state by Tarchanoff, Maximo witch, Schicharoff, 
etc., have proved that this basis possesses a tonifying and 
dynamogenous action, like that of the testicular fluid of 
Brown-Sequard. 
Spermine is not an oxydizing agent, but it gives rise by 
its contact to an acceleration of the mineral oxydations, as 
well as of the physiological. This property of being an ex¬ 
citant of the oxydations explains the phenomena produced by 
spermine in men as well as in animals. It resists the intra- 
organic oxydations. 
The beneficial action observed in diabetes is also explained 
by a reduction of the formation of spermine produced by the 
pancreas in diabetic patients. 
The action of spermine as a tonic and a nervine agent is 
easily understood from its effect in restoring to the blood its 
power of carrying oxygen to nervous elements.— Ibid. 
