INTRODUCTION. 



A FEW words of explanatory character in regard to the following essay may 

 not be out of place. From the time of Fontana, 1767, until the able essay of 

 Lucien Bonaparte, in 1843, on the chemistry of venom, there was no paper of 

 moment on serpent poisons. In January, 1861, one of us, S. Weir Mitchell, 

 published a long study of the venom of the Crotalus durissus, and in 1868 sup- 

 plemented it by a shorter contribution, in which he related some recent discoveries 

 of his own. and corrected certain errors of his former paper. These two essays 

 may be considered as constituting with Lucien Bonaparte's the foundation of the 

 later work in this direction, and perhaps as having left the study of venoms in as 

 definite a position as could be gained with the laboratory facilities of 1843 to 1868. 



In 1872, the government of India enabled Sir Joseph Fayrer to publish a volume 

 of beautiful plates of the venomous snakes of India, to which was appended also 

 a series of investigations into the toxicology of their poisons. In 1872 the same 

 author and Dr. Lander Brunton contributed an admirable physiological study of 

 the effects of venoms. 1 



In 1874, Vincent Richards, as chairman of a government commission, published 

 an excellent report on antidotes. 



Dr. Wall's 2 thoughtful and suggestive book appeared in 1883. It is a compara- 

 tive study of the poisons of the colubrine and viperine serpents of India. 



These, with a too brief study of the poison of our copperhead by Dr. Isaac 

 Ott, of Easton, Pennsylvania, sum up all of value which has been added to the 

 physiological literature of this most interesting subject. 



Why it has won so few investigators is not far to seek. Even in India, where 

 the appalling loss of life from snake-bites has of late invigorated research, the 

 power and means of government were needed to overcome the obstacles which 

 surround such scientific effort from inception to close. But, if in a land where 

 snakes abound and professional snake-catchers can be had, it is yet not easy to 

 follow this pursuit with success, elsewhere it is a task set about with inconceivable 

 obstacles. The fear of serpents, the rarity of some species, the distances to which 

 they have to be carried, the mortality of caged specimens, and the great cost of 



1 Proc. Roy. Soc. 1812, 1873, and 1875. 



a Indian Snake Poisons; their Nature and Effects. A. J. Wall, M.D., F.R.ColJ.S., 1883. 



1 April, 1886. ( I ) 



