IT IS WELL known that several drugs produce symptoms which closely resemble common clinical syndromes seen in certain psychiatric patients. Since 1910 considerable attention has been focused on the effects of one of these drugs, bulbocapnine, which experimentally produces in animals practically all of the motor manifestations seen in human catatonia. In a long series of experiments extending over many years, deJong and collaborators exhaustively studied the relation of bulbocapnine catalepsy to human catatonia.1 They concluded that the phenomena are very similar and that bulbocapnine and other catalepsyproducing drugs have a common denominator in that all produce a derangement in the metabolism of the central nervous system which results in the catatonia. The work of deJong has been critically treated by Ferraro and Barrera2; and their monograph, together with deJong's book, presents a comprehensive review of the subject of bulbocapnine catalepsy.
Several studies have been made in this