144 OPHIDIANS. 
Why, when no impediment exists to the access of oxygen, 
should the blood become so gradually deoxidized in cases of 
snake-bites, except upon the supposition that something had 
been added to it which prevented those actions and reactions 
between blood and oxygen upon which the manifestations of 
life depend? The fluid state of the blood is also in harmony 
with deficient oxidation, and yet there is no hindrance to 
respiration, no reason, as in drowning, why the oxygen 
should not reach the blood. It does reach it, but in the pres- 
ence of serpent-poison its life-sustaining power is withheld, 
unless some other agent be added to the blood to counteract 
it. When the poison is in the blood, the large cells are 
strangely altered: the white corpuscles are greatly swollen, 
and certainly increased in quantity, the increase in size appar- 
ently keeping pace with the fluidity of the blood, although 
such changes do not occur in white corpuscles placed in water. 
This change in the corpuscles commences during life, but 
goes on indefinitely after death, until all the granular matter 
seen in the blood becomes converted into cells. 
Their average diameter is ;7!55 of an inch. The nucleus 
is round or kidney-shaped, and the outer cell-wall so delicate 
as to escape the notice of most observers until their attention 
is repeatedly directed to it. In addition, the application of 
magenta reveals a minute colored spot, like a ruby, at some 
part of the circumference, resembling the macula seen in the 
red corpuscles of all vertebrates, as pointed out by Roberts. 
This condition of white cell is common to nearly all fluid 
blood of cats and dogs; especially where it is deficient in 
fibrin the cells become very evident after death, but when the 
blood is rich in fibrin the corpuscles, being less at liberty, retain 
their normal shapes ; in fact they swell in serum minus fibrin. 
In leucocythemia, where both white cells and fibrin are in 
excess, these changes do not occur. 
