OP THE VENOM OF THE RATTLESNAKE. 97 



Ana!o(/j/ hetween the Symptoms of Crotalus Poismiinff and (hose of Cerlain Diseases. 

 — I am unwilling to leave this unsatisfactory, but necessary part of my task, with- 

 out calling attention to the singular likeness between the symptoms and lesions of 

 Crotalus poisoning, and those of certain maladies, such as yellow fever.' If for a 

 moment we lose sight of the local injection, and regard only the symptoms which 

 follow, and the tissue changes which ensue, the resemblance becomes still more 

 striking. 



In both diseases, for such they are, we have a class of cases in which death seems 

 to occur suddenly and inexplicably, as though caused by an overwhelming dose of 

 the poison. In both diseases, these cases are marked by symptoms of profound 

 prostration, and in both the post-mortem revelations fail to explain the death. I 

 have spoken, as an example, of yellow fever, but similar instances are not wanting 

 in cholera, typhoid, and typhus fevers, and in scarlatina. 



A second class of cases, both of Crotalus poisoning and of yellow fever, survive 

 the first shock of the malady, and then begin to exhibit the train of symptoms which 

 terminates in more or less complete degradation of the character of the blood. Vary- 

 ing remarkably among themselves, exhibiting, as it were, preferences for this or that 

 organ, all of these maladies agree in the destruction of the fibrin of the blood which 

 their fatal cases frequently exhibit. In yellow fever, the likeness to venom poison- 

 ing is most distinctly preserved, as we trace the symptoms of both diseases to the 

 point where the difiluent blood leaks out into the mucous and serous cavities. The 

 yellowness which characterizes many yellow fever cases, I do not find described 

 as a current symptom of the venom malady, but it is often mentioned as one 

 of the accompaniments of the period of recovery from the bite.^ It is, indeed, 

 most probable, that if small and repeated doses of venom were introduced at 

 intervals into the body of an animal, a disease might be produced even more 

 nearly resembling the malady in question. In the parallel thus drawn, I have 

 given but the broad outlines of resemblance, nor was it to be expected that the 

 minor details would be alike. From a general and philosophic point of view, this 

 similarity is sufficiently striking to make me hope that the complete control of one 

 such septic poison for experimental use, may enable us in future to throw new light 

 on those septic poisons of disease whose composition we know nothing of, and whose 

 very means of entering the body they destroy, is, as yet, a mystery. 



* This analogy Las been noted by S. L. Mitchill, by Magendie, and by Gaspard, who has also called 

 attention to the resemblance between ordinary putrefactive poisoning, such as arises from injection into 

 the blood of decayed animal substances, and the poisoning by venom. Neither in this, or in any other 

 cases of the kind, is the likeness perfect; and while, to use a naturalist's phrase, we recognize these 

 septic maladies as of one genus, we cannot regard them as so nearly allied as to be mere varieties of 

 one species. Yellow fever and putrefactive poisoning both begin, in the mass of cases, with a fever, 

 which is absent in the first stages of venom poisoning ; and there are other and wide diflfereuces which it 

 is needless to enumerate here. See Gaspard, Journal dc Physiologie, tome iv. p. 2 et seq., and tome iii. 

 pp. 81-85 of same Journal. See also La Roche on Yellow Fever, vol. ii. p. 59T. 



" Jaundice, occasionally observed in France as an early sym]>tom of viper bite, has been usually 

 regarded as the jaundice of fear, a cause which certainly cannot be invoked to account for the icterus 

 seen in late stages of the malady caused by the venom. 

 13 



