172 ON ANIMAL AND 



credit. If applications can be of any avail in 

 casualties so desperate, assiduous frictions of 

 unctuous substances, but particularly of olive 

 oil, or of equal parts of laudanum and volatile 

 alkali over the parts affected, and full doses of 

 carbonate of ammonia conjoined with antispas- 

 rnodics administered internally and frequently 

 repeated, from their uniform success in the bite 

 of the viper, appear to be well calculated to pro- 

 duce good effects, and are therefore well worthy 

 of trial. 



Dr. Orfila, a French author, who has published 

 a valuable treatise on poisons, has recommended 

 the application of a ligature above the wounded 

 part, so as to check the returning blood to the 

 heart, without stopping the circulation ; and 

 then to apply caustics, so as to destroy deeply 

 the whole of the surrounding parts. His internal 

 remedies are volatile alkali, wine, and active 

 diaphoretics. 



In the second volume of the Medico Chirurgical 

 Transactions, Mr. Ireland, then surgeon to the 

 60th. regiment, has given an account of four cases 

 in which arsenic had been successfully adminis- 

 tered internally for some very desperate bites 

 from the Colubar Carinatus, a most venomous 

 serpent, peculiar to the Island of St. Lucia, in 

 the West Indies ; and from whose bites, an offi- 

 cer and several men belonging to the 68th. regi- 

 ment, had some months before fallen a sacrifice. 



