With regard to the symptoms you have described to us, can you tell me whether the result of your observations is that these symptoms occur uniformly, or at uniform periods of time, or whether they vary occasionally?—They certainly do not occur at uniform periods of time. I have not observed considerable variation in the order, but I have in the time.
When the convulsions have once set in have you found considerable difference as to the periods at which they take place?—Some difference, with greater or less intervals.
Have you also found that one animal will have a succession of attacks before it dies, and another will die after a much less amount of convulsion?—Yes. An animal seldom dies after one convulsion, generally four or five, and often a great many more. I have known one or two instances in which the animals have died after one convulsion.
From a dose which in the same quantity has not produced the same effect in other instances?—Yes.
Does the order in which the muscles of the body are convulsed vary also?—To some extent it does. The convulsions are generally simultaneous in the muscles of the trunk and those of the extremities. I think the limbs are generally affected first; they may be simultaneous; but the limbs are more easily observed.
Have you known any instance in which rigidity greater than is due to the ordinary rigor-mortis has occurred after death?—I do not think there is any difference. I have known instances in which they were very rigid, but I have known instances in which the muscles were flaccid. I may state I do not think there is any peculiar rigidity produced by strychnia.
With regard to the lady whose case we do not name, was it not the fact that, although the muscles of the body were flexible, the hands were curved and the feet arched and muscles contracted?—Not more than is usual from ordinary causes. I have said the hands were curved and the feet arched by muscular contraction.
Do you mean to say that when you spoke of the feet being decidedly arched that you meant no more than is due to the ordinary rigidity of death?—I do; that is what I mean by muscular contraction.
Do you mean to say that when you signed this, “The hands were incurved and the feet decidedly arched by muscular contraction,” you meant no more than is due to the ordinary rigidity of death?—I do, and stated so at the time, not in the report I have signed, but in conversation with the parties engaged.
You made a report which did not include the whole?—It is stated in the former part of the report that the other muscles of the body were so; that there was a distinction between the two portions of the body—a statement of fact, but nothing more.