The Action of the Venom on the Blood. J3 



as being very important, viz., the coughing or spitting 

 of blood or bloody serum after the bite, owing to 

 exudations through the walls of both capillaries and 

 air vesicles. 



The following case, which I was called to attend, 

 bears upon this point : A gentleman residing in 

 South Yarra, near Melbourne, rang rne up at about 

 midnight in May 1868. He told me he had been 

 bitten by a snake, that he did not want my advice, 

 only that he wished to know if it was a poisonous 

 snake or not. With that, he opened a parcel and let 

 the snake, which had been cut in halves, fall upon the 

 carpet. The fall made it, although dead, wriggle about 

 a little. I saw the punctures on his arm, examined the 

 head of the snake, and found it to be that of a vigorous 

 tiger snake (Hoplocephalus cwrtus). Presently he 

 asked leave to go on the verandah, where I heard 

 him vomiting, and an hour or so afterwards, at his home, 

 he coughed up into his cambric handkerchief, blood- 

 colored sputum. I felt sure he would die, which he 

 did, twelve hours after the bite. His intelligence 

 remained nearly to the last. The devitalised blood 

 (the cause and manner of which I hope to explain 

 further on), was no longer capable of carrying on the 

 processes of life. It was as if one were looking at 

 St. Paul's Cathedral, and seeing it from some mysterious 

 cause tumbling into dust. Such were my thoughts 

 watching the passing away of this fine man. It was 

 the first case of death from snake-poison I had seen. 



