260 VENOMS 
efficacious against the bite of the Chalcis, Cerastes, Seps, Elaps and 
Dipsas.” 
In Equatorial America, and especially in India, a multitude 
of plants are credited with marvellous properties, which they 
possess only in the imagination of the snake-charmers or medicine- 
men by whom they are employed. None of them stand the test of 
experiment, any more than the more or less compound drugs, 
numbers of specimens of which from all sources have passed 
through my hands. 
It cannot, however, be denied that certain chemical substances, 
of well-defined composition, are very useful, not as physiological 
antidotes to venoms, but as agents for their modification or destruc- 
tion in the poisoned wounds, when they have not yet been absorbed. 
In this way permanganate of potash, chromic acid, chloride of 
gold, and the alkaline hypochlorites, especially hypochlorite of 
lime, may be extremely useful under many circumstances. 
Permanganate of potash was recommended in 1881 by Professor 
de Lacerda,! of Rio de Janeiro, as the result of experiments made 
by him with venoms of Brazilian snakes. When a few cubic 
centimetres of a 1 per cent. solution of permanganate of potash are 
quickly injected into the actual wound caused by the bite and 
around the point of inoculation, there can be no doubt that the 
venom not yet absorbed is destroyed. When mixed in vitro with 
venom, permanganate renders the latter innocuous. 
Here, however, it is a case of actual destruction by direct 
contact. If we inject a lethal dose of venom into the right thigh 
of an animal, for example, and several cubic centimetres of per- 
manganate solution into different parts of the body, or beneath the 
skin of the left thigh, neither the general intoxication nor the local 
effects of the venom are modified. 
The same may be said with regard to chromic acid (1 per cent. 
! Comptes rendus de Vv Académie des Sciences, Paris, September, 1881. 
