126 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



the mouth of a young bird in the nest when it opened its beak for food, 

 did it no injury. 



Persons bitten by serpents generally experience, as the first effect, an 

 intense pain in the part wounded — vertigo, nausea, fainting, and coldness. 



If the venom has been inoculated directly into a vein, these symptoms 

 terminate in death in a short time. If not, the part swells, becomes 

 discolored, spotted over the surface of the member, and sometimes over 

 the entire body. 



The swelling is sometimes very great, extending over a large sur- 

 face; but the heat and inflammatory reaction which accompany it are 

 of a low grade. 



If the amount of venom which has been deposited be small, or the 

 wound has been properly treated, the swelling after having reached a 

 certain point slowly subsides, but the part affected remains for a long 

 time indurated. It has even been supposed that the extraordinary 

 enlargement knovv^n under the name of elephantiasis is in many cases a 

 remote effect of this wound. 



As soon as the swelhng commences to subside, another danger threat- 

 ens the patient, viz : passive hemorrhage. The constitutional effects of 

 the poison are such that they produce a dissolved state of the blood like 

 that which exists in scurvy. Hence bleeding is liable to occur from 

 the mouth, lungs, bowels, ulcerated surfaces, or the slightest wounds, 

 or from all these at a time. 



In a case which occurred in the Illinois general hospital, the blood 

 which flowed from the gums was found so entirely destitute of fibrine, 

 the principle upon which the coagulation depends, that no trace of it 

 could be detected under the microscope. At this state the breath ex- 

 hales a fetid odor, which is not only sickening at the moment, but which 

 is said to have produced serious illness in those exposed for a length of 

 time to its influence. 



Bites which occur about the face are much more dangerous than 

 those upon the extremities. 



This discoloration results from the dissolved state of the blood which 

 gives rise to hemorrhage, mortification, and death. 



Nevertheless, the bite even of the most venomous species of serpents 

 is not invariably nor even generally fatal. 



There are seasons when they are inactive and inflict but a slight 

 wound. The venom is at times much less virulent than at others, or it 

 may have been exhausted by repeated bites. Small serpents have not 

 sufficient force to penetrate the skin, and bites where the skin is thick 

 or covered with clothing are least danoerous. 



On the other hand if the serpent be old, of large size, and the bite 

 occur in the commencement of summer, the danger is very great. 



There is reason to believe that the poison used by the Indian tribes 

 on their arrows, is, in many cases, nothing else than the venom of the 

 serpent preserved in a peculiar manner. 



Mr. Schomburgh himself says that the belief, that animal poisons 

 entered into its composition was so rooted in Guiana, that on the occa- 

 sion of his second visit, in 1837, he was unable to eradicate it. 



Messrs. Bernard and Pelouze, in a memoir presented to the Academy 

 of Sciences at Paris, in 1850, express the opinion that it acts in the 



