260 VENOMS 



efficacious against the bite of the CJialcis, Cerastes, Seps, Elaps and 

 Dipsas.'' 



In Equatorial America, and especially in India, a multitude 

 of plants are credited with marvellous properties, which they 

 possess only in the imagination of the snake-charmers or medicine- 

 men by whom they are employed. None of them stand the test of 

 experiment, any more than the more or less compound drugs, 

 numbers of specimens of which from all sources have passed 

 through my hands. 



It cannot, however, be denied that certain chemical substances, 

 of well-defined composition, are very useful, not as physiological 

 antidotes to venoms, but as agents for their modification or destruc- 

 tion in the poisoned wounds, when they have not yet been absorbed. 

 In this way permanganate of potash, chromic acid, chloride of 

 gold, and the alkaline hypochlorites, especially hypochlorite of 

 lime, may be extremely useful under many circumstances. 



Permanganate of potash was recommended in 1881 by Professor 

 de Lacerda,^ of Eio de Janeiro, as the result of experiments made 

 by bini with venoms of Brazilian snakes. When a few cubic 

 centimetres of a 1 per cent, solution of permanganate of potash are 

 quickly injected into the actual wound caused by the bite and 

 around the point of inoculation, there can be no doubt that the 

 venom not yet absorbed is destroyed. When mixed in vitro with 

 venom, permanganate renders the latter innocuous. 



Here, however, it is a case of actual destruction by direct 

 contact. If we inject a lethal dose of venom into the right thigh 

 of an animal, for example, and several cubic centimetres of per- 

 manganate solution into different parts of the body, or beneath the 

 skin of the left thigh, neither the general intoxication nor the local 

 effects of the venom are modified. 



The same may be said with regard to cliromic acid (1 per cent. 



' Comj^tcs Tcnd'us de l' Academic dcs Sciences, Paris, September, 1881. 



