438 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



coming on in so short a time shows that the poison must be 

 an irritant of a very powerful order. The second point is that 

 while the poison has powerful local it has a very marked 

 general effect. The enfeebling of the heart's action, the weak 

 pulse, delirium, and general debility show that, besides the 

 irritant, there is a second ingredient which acts upon the 

 body as a whole. 



In most of these poisonous animals, particularly in snakes, 

 such as cobras, a body known as an albumose has been 

 isolated from their poison, which has been shown to be, at 

 any rate, one of the causes of the poisoning. I cannot help 

 thinking that in the case of the katipo the element which 

 brings on such acute general symptoms, as distinct from the 

 local, is of the nature of an albumose. I took the trouble to 

 collect about a tablespoonful of the blood which came away 

 from the incisions in the inflamed tissue. The blood was 

 very watery and contained far less than its proper amount 

 of red corpuscles — a sign of albumose poisoning. Further, it 

 would not coagulate easily, which is yet another sign. I 

 separated off the albumens from the blood and tested for 

 albumoses, of which there are three. I was enabled to find 

 a large quantity of deutero-albumose in the specimen- — a 

 quantity far in advance of anything one would expect to find 

 in the blood, even in a case of cellulitis. On such evidence 

 it would not be safe to say that deutero-albumose is one of 

 the factors in the poison ; it would be necessary to extract the 

 poison from the animal and examine it chemically first. I 

 only point out as a curious coincidence that, whereas in 

 snake-bite albumoses are found in their poison, in the blood 

 which came from the tissues immediately affected by the bite 

 of the katipo there w T as an excess of an albumose present. 

 I may say that the tests for an albumose are very definite. 

 On adding cold nitric acid after other albumens have been 

 coagulated by saturation with ammonium - sulphate, albu- 

 moses are precipitated in the cold from the filtrate and 

 dissolve up again on heating, reappearing on cooling. 

 Further, they give a pink colour with the so-called biuret 

 reaction. These results were obtained in this case. 



As to the general treatment of the patient, I gave him 

 digitalis, ether, and ammonia, to support the heart's action. 

 Surgical measures are, however, of by far the greatest value. 

 Free incision and sucking the wound is the best remedy. 



In conclusion, I must apologize for the very slight nature 

 of this paper. 



