112 rnYSIOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY 



The question of the reality of the influence of the iodine upon the active qualities 

 of Crotalus venom still rests upon rather insecure ground. It certainly seems to 

 have been successful in pigeons, but the fallacies which surround these researches 

 are numerous and baffling, and the experimentum crucis of mixing the iodine with 

 the venom before innoculating with it, was not made by Dr. Brainard. To set the 

 matter at rest, I have recently made a number of experiments. It was apparent 

 that if animals previously bitten could be saved by subsequent injections of iodine 

 into the part, they should run no risk when a mixture of venom and the iodine 

 solution was thrown into their tissues. On pursuing this method, I observed, as 

 Dr. Brainard had done, that the local symptoms were slight, or did not appear at 

 all, but whereas his cases recovered, mine died despite the absence of local pheno- 

 mena. The explanation of this latter fact, as well as the full details of numerous 

 observations upon the use of reputed constitutional antidotes, I shall set forth at 

 length in a future essay. At present I can only add that iodine as a local antidote 

 has uniformly failed in my hands, although every means was taken to give it a 

 fair trial. It is proper to state here that Dr. Brainard made use, not of the Cro- 

 talus, but of the Grotaloplioi-us tergeminus, or prairie Rattlesnake of the west. As 

 yet, Dr. Brainard's antidote has never been employed upon the body of man, except 

 by Dr. Coolidge, who unfortunately used the Bibron treatment at the same time. 



Class iih. — Consists of various substances which have been applied to the skin 

 on and about the wound, or placed in contact with the raw surfaces of the incisions 

 or excisions. Among them are warm and cold water, ammonia, alcohol, olive oil, 

 etc. My own experiments, and the observations of others, justify us in rejecting 

 them altogether, so far at least as they ai-e supposed to exert specific power. 



Although, as I have already said, I consider this essay as but a preparation for 

 the full experimental examination of the treatment of sei'pent bite, I do not wish 

 to conclude without some comment upon the constitutional remedies which I have 

 necessarily been called upon to survey and judge in the course of my researches. 

 A host of these may be dismissed with a word, but before I criticize those of greater 

 pretension, it will be proper to make some statements regarding the misconceptions 

 which have crept into this part of the subject. 



If, as I have elsewhere urged, we could dismiss from view the mode in which the 

 virus enters the body, and were called upon to consider only the resultant malady, 

 we would as little have dreamed of specifics or real antidotes, as we now do in 

 yellow fever, or ordinary putrefactive poisoning. We should at least have con- 

 fessed that such belonged only to the hopes of therapeutics, and not to its attained 

 realities. Such, however, is the tangible and visible nature of the poison that we 

 have been continually seduced into the idea that we must possess some available 

 and directly efficient means of actually neutralizing its power, when once in the 

 system itself. 



Apart, then, from the question of local antidotes, which is altogether a difierent 

 matter, what probability is there that we really possess specific general remedies? 

 Even here, the knowledge that our local means, however active, and with all our 

 power to place them in direct contact with the venom, are but too ineflectual, 

 should at least have tauglit us to receive with wise mistrust every account of con- 

 stitutional antidotes. 



