est and most powerful
motor-centres have succumbed to the insidious poison, general paresis
becomes general paralysis and all the motor-centres of the body are in a
condition of more or less suspended functional activity. This and this
only is the condition of the centres, the whole secret of snake-poison,
that has puzzled the human mind for ages and yet appears so simple when
discovered at last. It is beautifully and strikingly illustrated in the
phenomena before us. We have coma and complete general paralysis, every
motor-nerve cell, from the highest psycho-motor one downwards, is thrown
into a state of torpor and has ceased to discharge the life force that
regulates every process of life and the entire absence of which
inevitably must be death. Only weak, lingering currents are sent forth
yet and put off the inevitable finale for a time. But the strychnine is
injected and mark the change. It courses quickly to every one of the
sleepers, for whom it also has an affinity, but the direct opposite to
that of the deadly venom that has overpowered them. It touches them as
if with the wand of a magician and orders them to awake and do their
work. There is no disobeying the mandate, for it is founded on one of
nature's unchangeable laws. Almost immediately the cells begin their
work again, the life streams flow afresh, coma and paralysis vanish and
within a very short time the subject of this beautiful experiment is
snatched from the brink of the grave and restored to life and health.

The phenomena of sleep and coma as the result of a poison acting as a
depressant of motor nerve force afford food for some interesting
speculations, which, however, as more concerning the psychologist, the
writer can only glance at here. It is evident that in the highest of
psycho-motor centres, the organs of thought and of consciousness, the
paresis of the lower centres assumes the form of sleep, and paralysis
that of coma. Sleep, as a partial, and coma, as a complete, obliteration
of thought and consciousness must, therefore, be intimately connected
with motor nerve function, sleep being a reduction, coma a suppression
of the function, or a suspension of thought. Ideation, to use J. S.
Mill's very appropriate term for the thought process, appears to be
effected by motor nerve currents or, at all events, to be accompanied by
them and suspended with their suspension. The thinking principle, the
nous within us, is no doubt more than mere nerve a