THE USE OF CALMETTE'S ANTIVENENE IN SNAKE-BITE. 405 



From a study of these tables one realises how differently snake venoms 

 act — one acting through the nervous system with incredible rapidity, 

 another requiring some days to produce its equally fatal results, while 

 a third acts almost entirely on the blood. 



Realising this then, is it much wonder that scientists looked askance 

 on Oalmette's sweeping assertion, that his antivenene was useful for the 

 bites of all poisonous snakes ; knowing, as they did, that the venom used 

 by him to produce immunity in the horse was that of the cobra, with 

 only small additions of other snake venoms ? (2) 



Behring, the great authority on serum-therapy, and whose name you 

 must all be familiar with in connection with anti-diphtheritic serum, 

 lays it down as a law that " the action of an immunising serum is 

 specific " : that is, in other words, an immunising serum is only useful 

 in the case of the disease or toxine by means of which it has 

 been prepared, e.g., anti-diphtheritic serum is only of use against 

 diphtheria, not against plague or tetanus or any other bacterial 

 disease. 



Everyone now admits this, so it is not astonishing to find that a 

 serum prepared by injecting a horse with the nerve-destroying cobra 

 venom should be quite inactive in cases of poisoning by the blood- 

 destroying Daboia poison. 



The first published account of experiments undertaken to investigate 

 this point was by Professor G. J. Martin, of Melbourne, now Director 

 of the Lister Institute, London (Inter-Colonial Med. Journal of 

 Australasia, Augt. 20, 1897, and Apl. 20, 1898), who showed that 

 Oalmette's serum was useless against the poison of the Australian tiger 

 snake (Hoplocephalus curtus). 



Since then, Tidswell, of Sydney, has proved (3) that it is equally 

 useless for the other poisonous snakes of Australia. He has gone a step 

 further, however, for he manufactured a serum by injecting a horse 

 with Hoplocephalus poison, which was highly effective in preserv- 

 ing animals from the effects of that poison, but wholly useless against 

 three other Australian snakes, viz., the brown snake, the black snake 

 (Pseudechis) and the death adder (Aeanthophis), though these belong 

 to the same sub-family Elapinae of the Colubrine class. 



These observations have been further extended by Captain Lamb, 

 I.M.S., who, working with serum sent to him by Dr. Tidswell, proved 

 that this Hoplocephalus serum (4) " has no neutralising power for the 



