150 



Up to 10 p. M. he was quite well ; in the night rigidity of 

 the muscles came on and at 4 A. M. vomiting. In the 

 morning at 8 o'clock, the bite, on the foot, was discovered ; 

 he had rigidity and spasms of the muscles all day. On the 

 next day he remained in the same state, at 6 P. M. spasms 

 set in and at 7 p. m. he died — 49 hours after the bite.* 



The treatment of the bite inflicted by the highly ven- 

 omous snakes is an unsatisfactory and a very unpleasant 

 subject to deal with. Amongst the medical men of India 

 and Australia who have made a speciality of snake-bite 

 and its treatment, several antidotes have been found and 

 used with great success by their respective inventors. 

 From the days of the Tanjore pill to the year 1873 the 

 story to be recorded is much the same. Numerous Medi- 

 cal men have found the external and internal administra- 

 tion of ammonia to be a specific ; but experience on man 

 and experiment on animals have shown it to have little if 

 any eflTect. Dr. Halford, of Melbourne, proposed to inject 

 ammonia into the veins, and his treatment has been 

 adopted with great success by some Australian Medical 

 practitioners ; moribund persons rise at once, walk and eat. 

 Unfortunately there is another side to the question ; not in 

 a single case was there evidence that the snake was 

 of a deadly character, and it is well known that Austra- 

 lian venomous snakes have such short fangs that bush boots 

 or even ordinary cloth trousers are an efiicient protection 

 against accident from them. Moreover the experiments of 

 Drs. Fayrer (Calcutta), Hilson (Bijnour) and Richards (Bala- 

 sore) on animals bitten by cobras show that the remedy 

 has not the slightest efiect. 



The treatment used by Dr. Shortt and which he claims 

 has cured the three men on Avhom it was used is the ad- 



* Not 71 hours as stated by Dr. Fayrer, unless there be a mistake 

 ill the dates. 



