468 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



by injection of a chemical destroyer at the ^vound is chimerical, but 

 siich a conclusion, it seems to me, ^v•ould be premature to say the least 

 It is true that the introductiou and non-efficacy of the venom mixed 

 with the chemical proves nothing as being practically no venom; it is 

 also true that the introduction of the chemical live minutes after the 

 bite would be of but little practical use if five minutes were the extreme 

 limit for its beneficial action. It is also undoubtedly true that even 

 withiu this time it is not always capable of, alone and unassisted, to 

 save the life of the patient. On the other hand, it must not be for- 

 gotten that the above experiments had been chiefly theoretical, and 

 that no means were taken to assist the remedy experimented with. It 

 is rather sinjiular that the experimenters should not have extended 

 their experiments somewhat, and it is particularly surprising that those 

 testing the efficacy of the local treatment should not have introduced 

 the use of ligatures to a greater extent. By thus confining the action 

 of the poison to the neighborhood of the point of inoculation the 

 experimenter would probably have been able to extend the period 

 within which the chemical agent showed itself beneficent considerably 

 beyond the five minutes. I think this is a point worthy of consider- 

 ation by those contemplating future experiments with local chemical 



remedies. 



After the important discoveries of Mitchell and Eeichert as to the 

 multiple chemical composition of the snake poisons, it was but nat- 

 ural that the attention of the searchers for remedies was principally 

 drawn in the direction of looking for local chemical destroyers. It was 

 also natural that these researches should prevail in those countries in 

 which the crotalids and the vipers predominate, because of the local 

 destructiveness of the poison of these snakes. But the other side was, 

 fortunately, not lost sight of, and the search for remedies to counteract 

 the poison after it has reached the circulation, was naturally carried 

 on most vigorously in the home of the najid and elapid snakes, m 

 India and Australia. 



Mitchell had already pointed out the hopelessness of finding a chem- 

 ical which, introduced into the veins, would be able to destroy the 

 poison without also destroying the blood. The only rational line of 

 research would be to discover such remedies as would, to use Mitchell's 

 words, ^^ oppose the actions of venom upon the most vulnerable parts of 

 the system," or, as he calls them, "physiological antagonists." It will 

 be remembered that Mitchell and Eeichert came to the conclusion that 

 " there can be no question, however, that the respiratory centers are 

 the parts of the system most vulnerable to venom, and that death is 

 most commonly due to their paralysis." Although, according to them, 

 paralysis of the heart generally only plays a secondary role in the case 

 of snake poisoning, yet the cardiac power is sensibly enfeebled, especi- 

 ally in the early stage. The kind of remedies to be looked for would 



