esh_ or
when _quickly dried_.

MUSCARIN.[A]

[A] The earliest account of the separation of the poisonous principles
of the mushrooms of the genus Amanita dates back to the experiments of
Apoiger in 1851. Harnack's researches were published in 1876 and those
of Huseman in 1882.

To the eminent German chemists Schmiedeberg and Koppe is due the credit
of isolating the active poisonous principle of the Fly mushroom
(_muscarin_). These authors published in 1869 a series of interesting
experiments made with _muscarin_, having relation to its effect upon the
heart, respiration, secretions and digestive organs, etc., and this was
supplemented by other experiments made by their pupils, Prof. R. Boehm
and E. Harnack. Schmiedeberg and Koppe's work relates to the effect of
this poison on man as well as upon the lower animals. Dr. J. L. Prevost
in 1874 reviewed the investigations made by Schmiedeberg and Koppe in a
paper read before the Biological Society of Geneva, adding some
confirmatory observations of his own relative to experiments made with
muscarin upon the lower animals. The experiments made by these authors
demonstrated "that muscarin arrests the action of a frog's heart, that a
muscarined frog's heart began to beat immediately under the influence of
atropin, and further that it was impossible to muscarine a frog's heart
while under the influence of atropin."

Schmiedeberg subjected cats and dogs to doses of muscarin, large enough
to produce death, and when the animals were about to succumb, injected
hypodermically from one to two milligrams of sulphate of _atropin_,
after which the toxic symptoms disappeared and the animals completely
revived. Prof. Boehm found that _digitalin_ likewise re-established
heart action when suspended by the action of muscarin.

In man the fatal termination, in cases of mushroom poisoning, where the
antidote is not used, may take place in from 5 to 12 hours or not for
two or three days.

According to Prof. E. Kobert's recent chemical analysis, the "Fly
mushroom," Amanita muscaria, contains not only the very poisonous
alkaloid _muscarin_ and the _amanitin_ of Letellier (_cholin_), but also
a third alkaloid, _pilz atropin_. The pilz-atropin (mushroom atropin)
was discovered by Schmiedeberg in a _commercial_ preparation of
_muscarin_, and later Prof. Kobert discovered it in varying proportions
in fresh mushrooms of different species. The effect of this third
alkaloid, it is claimed, is t