Now, in the first place, I have here to show that there is, as I have said, a fundamental error touching a well-known principle of physiology. So far as there is any difference between the excitability of nerve and muscle with respect to mechanical and electrical stimulation, it is the precise converse of that which Dr. Krukenberg supposes; it is not _muscle_, but _nerve_, which is the more sensitive to electrical stimulation--by which I understand him to mean the induction shock. The remarkable transposition of Dr. Krukenberg's ideas upon this matter does not affect the results of his observations upon the action of the various poisons; it only renders fatuous his criticism of these same results as previously published by me.
In the next place, I have to observe that in all my experiments I tried, as he subsequently tried, both kinds of stimulation, and also the constant current; but I soon found that even when one went to work with one's ideas upon the subject in a non-inverted position, no trustworthy inference could be drawn in favour of the muscular elements alone remaining uninjured from the bare fact that after the poisoning the neuro-muscular tissue often behaved differently towards different kinds of stimulation. Further, in the particular case of my experiments with curare--against which Dr. Krukenberg's remarks are chiefly directed on the ground that I did not prove the paralysis to be a merely muscular effect--I succeeded in obtaining very much better proof of the poison acting on the nervous elements, to the exclusion of the muscular, than I could have obtained by any process of inference, however good; that is to say, I obtained direct proof. It appears to me that Dr. Krukenberg must have failed to understand the English of the following sentences: "On nipping any portion of the poisoned half of Staurophora laciniata, this half remained _absolutely motionless_, while the unpoisoned half, _though far away from the seat of irritation_, immediately ceased its normal contractions, and folded itself together in the very peculiar and distinctive manner just described," _i.e._ "in one very strong and long-protracted systole." For the rest, see note on page 232.