CROTALUS POISONING. P11 
Analogy between Crotalus Poisoning and the Symptoms of 
Certain Diseases. 
“Tam unwilling to leave this unsatisfactory but necessary 
part of my task without calling attention to the singular like- 
ness 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 
eases in which death seems to occur suddenly and inexplicably, 
as though caused by an overwhelming dose of 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 degradation of the character of the blood, vary- 
ing remarkably among themselves, exhibiting, as it were, pref 
erences for this or that organ; all these maladies agree in the 
destruction of the fibrin of the blood, which these fatal cases 
frequently exhibit. In yellow fever the likeness to the venom 
poisoning is most distinctly preserved as we trace the symptoms 
of both diseases to the point where the diffluent blood leaks 
out into the mucous and serous cavities. The yellowness 
* This analogy has been noted by L.S. Mitchell, 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. 
