THE VENOMS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 547 



which is quickly diffusible. The venom exhausts the vital 

 forces ; therefore, excepting in the local surgical treatment, 

 all the best remedies are volatile and alcoholic stimulants. 

 Ammonia in the form of eaii de luce has long been approved, 

 both taken internally and rubbed into the wound. Professor 

 Halford's plan of subcutaneously injecting it has been very 

 successful in some cases of Australian snake-bites, and the 

 popularity of this mode has been seen in the large number of 

 hypodermic syringes purchased by persons in the bush. But 

 the use of these requires surgical skill ; and awkward attempts 

 by the laity have produced wounds which have been prejudicial 

 to the originator ; for though it is said that some attempts of 

 this kind were made by Fontana about one hundred years ago, 

 Halford could not have been aware of that, since he claims 

 to be the first who ventured to throw ammonia directly into 

 the blood. 'Previously to my experiments in 1868,' he says, 

 * it had never been thought possible to throw ten or twenty 

 minims of the strongest liquid ammonia directly into 

 the veins without killing the man on the spot.'^ He first 

 tried it on animals, and finding it successful, at length 

 ventured this * mode of treatment ' with human beings ; since 

 which other doctors in Australia have also practised it. 

 Still he does not claim for it infallibility, though giving some 

 cases in which the action of ammonia on the blood and 

 on the heart's action produced rapid recovery in persons 

 apparently dying. 



Any technical explanation must not be attempted by me ; 

 but those who are interested in this subject will find Prof. 

 Halford's own accounts in the Medical Times for 1873 and 



^ Medical Times, 1873, vol. ii. p. 90. 



