Curare, a poison invented by South American Indians for their arrows, is much used in physiological laboratories to paralyze the motor nerves, rendering an animal absolutely incapable of the slightest disturbing movement. Does it at the same time destroy sensation, or is the creature conscious of every pang? Claude Bernard, of Paris, Sharpey, of London, and Flint, of New York[B] all agree that sensation is _not_ abolished; on the other hand, Rutherford regards curare as a partial anaesthetic, and Huxley strongly intimates that Bernard in thus deciding from experiments that it does not affect the cerebral hemispheres or consciousness, "_jumped at a conclusion_ for which neither he nor anybody else had any scientific justification." This is extraordinary language for one experimentalist to use regarding others! If it is possible that such men as Claude Bernard and Professor Flint have "jumped at" one utterly unscientific conclusion, notwithstanding the most painstaking of vivisections, what security have we that other of our theories in physiology now regarded as absolutely established may not be one day as severely ridiculed by succeeding investigators? Is it, after all, true, that the absolute certainty of our most important deductions must remain forever hidden "unless the animal can speak"? [A] "He feels the pain, but has lost, so to speak, the idea of self defense." Lecons de Physiologie operatoire, 1879, p. 115. [B] Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 595.