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IV. -THE ANIMAL TOXINES (ZOOTOXINES). 



SNAKE TOXINES. 



Although venomous serpents have long been an object of fear 

 and of interest to widely different races of man, yet the history 

 of the investigation of their venom is quite recent. And this, 

 one must admit, is remarkable, since surely nothing should have 

 suggested itself more naturally to the scientific investigator than 

 the application of recent results in toxicology, especially in con- 

 nection with vegetable alkaloidal poisons, to the study of these 

 poisons, which are as interesting to the investigator as they are 

 important from the point of view of public hygiene. For, in 

 India alone, more than 20,000 men perish annually from the bite 

 of the cobra, Naja tripudians. And yet this branch of research 

 remained almost completely untouched until the investigations 

 into the nature of bacterial poisons, and especially those in- 

 augurated by METSCHNIKOFF, Roux, and YERSIN, compelled 

 attention to be directed also towards these poisons, which have 

 similar incredible toxic power. There were also external reasons 

 for this neglect. The material for these investigations, at all 

 events in the case of the most important venomous snakes, was 

 hardly to be obtained in Europe. It was only when American 

 medical science began to develop vigorously, and when the 

 foundation of the modern Colonial Empires led to the study of 

 tropical medicine, that the investigation of tropical venomous 

 snakes also received special attention. We do not, of course, 

 mean to assert that the poisonous characteristics of venomous 

 snakes had not been frequently studied ; this was notably the 

 case with the South European vipers, and we shall give an 

 outline of these earlier results in their proper place. But no 

 systematic chemical and pharmacological investigation of the true 

 poisonous substances was made until a relatively late period, 

 when the study of bacterial poisons had opened up quite new 

 avenues. Of the older researches mention may be made of those 

 of FoNTANA, 1 FAYRER and BRUNTON, 2 and WALL, 3 with whose 

 results we shall deal presently. 



1 Fontana, Trattado del vde.no della vipera, 1787. 



2 Fayrer and Brunton, "On the Nature of the Poison of Naja tripudians, 

 &c.," Proc. Roy. Soc., xxii., 68, 1874. 



3 Wall, "On the Poisons of Certain Species of Indian Snakes," Proc. 

 Roy. Soc., xxxii., 333, 1881. 



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