_Symptoms._—The time at which the symptoms commence varies according as the strychnia has been taken in solution or in a pill. In the first case a very bitter taste is experienced during swallowing, usually followed in a few minutes by a sense of suffocation and difficulty of breathing. Then there are twitchings of the muscles, jerking movements of the limbs, and a quivering of the whole frame. The limbs become rigid, the head is bent back, while the body is stiffened and arched, so that it rests on the head and heels (opisthotonos). The difficulty of breathing causes the face to become dusky, the eyeballs prominent, and the lips livid. The features assume a peculiar grin (risus sardonicus); there is much thirst, but perhaps inability to drink from spasm of the jaws; while the sufferer is quite conscious, is much alarmed, and is impressed with the idea that death is surely stealing upon him. As the attacks of spasms are commencing the patient cries out, and warns those about him of the approach of the seizure; he begs for help, and perhaps asks to be held, or rubbed, or turned over; and when the seizure passes off, at the end of forty or sixty seconds, he is exhausted, and bathed in sweat. The more he is disturbed or excited the shorter is the intervals between the attacks; and though a firm grasp seems to afford relief, yet a slight touch, a gust of air, or opening a door, will increase the suffering. As death approaches the tetanic spasms rapidly succeed each other; and the patient sinks, suffocated during an attack, or exhausted during an interval, in about two hours from the beginning of the symptoms. When the strychnia has been taken in a pill two hours have elapsed before any effects have been produced. A case is also reported (_Glasgow Medical Journal_, July, 1856) where a medical man took three grains of strychnia dissolved in spirits of wine and diluted sulphuric acid. He went to bed and slept for an hour and a half, and then awoke with a spasm. Under treatment he recovered. There is commonly a wide difference between tetanus arising from a wound or from disease and that provoked by strychnia. In the former case some exciting cause can be detected; the symptoms come on gradually, and only attain their full development at the end of several hours; the rigidity of the muscles is more or less permanent, there being no intervals of relaxation as there are in poisoning; and death has hardly been known to occur in less than twenty-four hours, while frequently it is deferred for two or three days.