SNAKE POISON. 



7 



ducts like leucine, tyrosine or alkaloids. Gland epithelium 

 is certainly capable of exercising such a hydrating influence ; 

 the conversion of glycogen into sugar by the liver cells is 

 one of the best known examples. 



The following table, somewhat altered from Dr. Sidney 

 Martin's Goulstonian lectures to the Royal College of 

 Physicians, London (1892), illustrates the analogy between 

 various hydration processes, proteid being- in all cases the 

 material acted on. 



I have left to the last the effect of snake venom on the 

 blood, because it opens up other questions, and has no par- 

 ticular bearing on the general aspect of the subject of pro- 

 teid poisons. Fontana, more than a hundred years ago, 

 noticed that the blood remained fluid in animals dead of 

 viper bite, and Brainard, writing forty years back, states that 

 when death occurred immediately in animals bitten by rattle- 

 snakes the blood was found at the post-mortem examination 

 to be clotted ; but if some time elapsed before the animal 

 succumbed, the blood remained fluid in the vessels. The 

 continued fluidity of the blood has since then been noted 

 by numerous observers in the case of various snakes. 



