Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments on
transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter strychnos
of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no fatal action on
other animals.
A dog received a considerable quantity of poisoned
blood into his veins without any trace of irritation being perceived
in the spinal marrow.
I placed the most active curare in contact with the crural nerves of a
frog, without perceiving any sensible change in measuring the degree
of irritability of the organs, by means of an arc formed of
heterogeneous metals. Galvanic experiments succeeded upon birds, some
minutes after I had killed them with a poisoned arrow. These
observations are not uninteresting, when we recollect that a solution
of the upas-poison poured upon the sciatic nerve, or insinuated into
the texture of the nerve, produces also a sensible effect on the
irritability of the organs by immediate contact with the medullary
substance. The danger of the curare, as of most of the other
strychneae (for we continue to believe that the mavacure belongs to a
neighbouring family), results only from the action of the poison on
the vascular system. At Maypures, a zambo descended from an Indian and
a negro, prepared for M. Bonpland some of those poisoned arrows, that
are shot from blowing-tubes to kill small monkeys or birds. He was a
man of remarkable muscular strength. Having had the imprudence to rub
the curare between his fingers after being slightly wounded, he fell
on the ground seized with a vertigo, that lasted nearly half an hour.
Happily the poison was of that diluted kind which is used for very
small animals, that is, for those which it is believed can be recalled
to life by putting muriate of soda into the wound.
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