474 poisons : their effects and detection. [§ 605. 
on the contrary the pressure sinks, a fact on which there is no 
division of opinion. 
Nikitin has made some researches with sclerotic acid, which certainly 
possesses the most prominent therapeutic effects of ergot ; but since 
it is not the only toxic substance, it may not represent the collec¬ 
tive action of the drug, just in the same way that morphine is not 
equivalent in action to opium. Cold-blooded animals are very sensitive 
to sclerotic acid ; of the warm-blooded, the carnivora are more sensitive 
than the herbivora. The toxic action is specially directed to the 
central nervous system—with frogs, the reflex excitability is diminished 
to full paralysis ; with warm-blooded animals, reflex excitability is only 
diminished, and continues to exist even to death. 
The temperature falls, the breathing is slowed, and the respiration 
stops before the heart ceases to beat ; the peristaltic action of the intes¬ 
tines is quickened, and the uterus (even of non-pregnant animals) is 
thrown into contraction. The terminations of the sensory nerves are 
paralysed by the direct action of sclerotic acid, but they remain intact 
with general poisoning. The heart of frogs is slowed by sclerotic acid. 
Eberty observed that this slowing of the heart (he used ergotin) was 
produced even after destruction of the spinal cord ; he therefore con¬ 
sidered it as acting on the inhibitory nerve apparatus of the heart itself. 
Rossbach, using Wenzeln’s ecbolin, has also studied its action on the 
heart of the frog, and observed that the slowing affected the ventricles 
rather than the auricles, so that for one ventricle-systole there were two 
contractions of the auricles ; besides which, the contractions themselves 
were peculiar and abnormal in character. The cause of death from 
sclerotic acid seems to be paralysis of the respiration. It is said not to 
affect animal foetal life. With regard to the effects produced by feeding 
animals with ergotised grain, experiments made during the last century 
have proved that it produces a gangrenous disease— e.g., C. Salerne mixed 
one part of spurred rye with two of good barley, and fed pigs with the 
mixture ; a few days afterwards the pigs perished with dilated, hard, 
and black bellies, and offensively ulcerated legs ; another pig. fed entirely 
on the rye, lost its four feet and both ears. 
Robert 1 has investigated the effects produced on animals by 
“ sphacelic acid ” and by “ cornutin.” Sphacelic acid appears to'cause 
gangrene-like ergot, and Robert believes that in “ sphacelic acid ” is to be 
found the gangrene-producing substance. In cases of death putrefaction 
is rapid, the mucous membrane of the intestine is swollen, and the spleen is 
enlarged. If the mucous membrane of the intestine is examined micro¬ 
scopically, a large quantity of micro-organisms are found in the vessels, 
in the villi, between the muscular bundles, and in the deeper layers of 
the intestinal walls ; this is evidence that the protective epithelial cells 
1 Lehrbuck der Intoxicationen, by Dr Rudolph Robert, Stuttgart, 1893. 
