strychnine-like

Updated: April 30, 2025

Coupled with this distortion of the face, this Hippocratic smile, or 'risus sardonicus, as the old writers called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind?" "Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid," I answered, "some strychnine-like substance which would produce tetanus." "That was the idea which occurred to me the instant I saw the drawn muscles of the face.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four