216 VENOMS 
panied by a more or less considerable rise of temperature. After 
a few hours everything returns to its normal condition, and if the 
injection of a lethal dose of venom is repeated several times, at 
intervals of a few days, it is not long before antitoxic substances 
are found to appear in the serum. 
When the dose of venom injected is sufficient to cause death, 
we observe, a very few moments after the injection, a lowering of 
temperature and a hypoleucocytosis, which is the more pronounced 
in proportion to the nearness of the dose of venom to the minimal 
lethal dose. With very strong doses the hypoleucocytosis has not 
time to manifest itself. 
It is therefore probable that, in intoxication by venoms as in 
that by the toxins of micro-organisms, the protective rôle of the 
leucocytes is all-important, not only because these cells are capable 
of digesting venoms owing to their protoplasmic digestive juices, 
but also because they constitute if not the only, at any rate the 
principal source of the antitoxic substances or amboceptors. 
