li LIBRARY 



403 >A/ 



THE USE OF CALMETTE'S ANTIVENENE IN SNAR1 



BITE IN INDIA. 



By Lt.-Colonel "W. B. Bannerman, M.D. (EJin.), B.Sc, 

 F.R.S.E., Indian Medical Service. 



{Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 

 5th November 1903.) 



On the 21st of January 1902 Captain Lamb, I.M.S., read a paper 

 before our Society on " Snake Venoms : Their Physiological Action 

 and Antidote " which you will find published at p. 220 of Vol. XIV 

 of this Journal. In this paper he showed that the antivenene prepared 

 by Calmette, of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, was useful when adminis- 

 tered in time and in sufficient amount, in cases of cobra bite, but 

 useless as an antidote for Daboia poison. In Vol. XV of the Journal 

 at p. 112 appears an article by Fleet-Surgeon P. W. Bassett-Smith, 

 R.N., entitled "Snake-bites and Poisonous Fishes" in which it is stated, 

 on the authority of Calmette, that his antivenene was capable cf 

 protecting "animals and man from lethal doses of any venom, 

 although each snake venom has, per se, well marked toxic peculiarities 

 producing several and various local phenomena." 



Naturally those contradictory statements appearing in the Journal 

 of the Society have caused perplexity to some of the members, and 

 the Secretary has asked me, in the absence of Captain Lamb, to give a* 

 short account of his investigations, and to reconcile the two statements- 

 if possible. 



It must be said here that Bassett-Smith's article was originally pub- 

 lished in 1902 in the Encyclopaedia Medica and, therefore, can only re- 

 present the state of our knowledge prior to that date, and that he could 

 not possibly know of Captain Lamb's results, as these were not published 

 till a later period. 



Having cleared the way by these preliminary remarks let me present 

 to you, by means of these tables, a bird's-eye view of the various ways 

 in which venoms of some of the Indian snakes act. 



I can only give tables of the actions of the venoms of cobra (Naia 

 tripudians), Russell's viper {Daboia RusseUii) and banded krait (Bun- 

 garus fasciatus) as these are all that Captain Lamb has yet been able to 

 deal with, owing to the difficulty of collecting material. This is, I think, 

 a matter, so full of importance to the well being of India,, that the 

 Society would do well to represent it in the proper quarter, and so help 

 Captain Lamb to complete his series of valuable investigations, by 



