116 SHI JOSEPH FAYREB, K.C.S.I., ETC., 



SPECIAL COMMUNICATION. 



Augustus Mueller, Esq., M.D. of Yackandandah, Victoria, 



Australia, writes : — 



1 It may appear an act of presumption on the part of an obscure 

 Australian country practitioner to offer adverse comments on a 

 paper read by so high an authority on snakes and snake poison as 

 Sir Joseph Fayrer, but as the paper has been sent to me by an 

 Australian scientist for the purpose of eliciting some comments, 

 and as the author has not referrel to the results of some recent 

 scientific research on the subject of snake poison, I would, in the 

 interest of science, venture on the task. I agree with Sir Joseph 

 Fayrer that snake poison kills by extinguishing the source of nerve 

 energy, if by this definition he means a merely functional depres- 

 sion or suspension of the motor and vaso-motor nerve centres 

 without organic or structural changes in these organs. But I 

 cannot agree that it is also a blood-poison and that the viperine 

 poison is the most potent one. That all snake poison is a nerve- 

 poison, that its action is purely dynamic, that it reduces in strength 

 and in fatal cases completely suspends the currents of motor-nerve 

 force, both from cell to cell and from cell to peripheral fibre, are 

 scientific deductions that I venture to think can now no longer 

 be called into question. I hold that it has also been proven that 

 this suspension of motor nerve-currents is not accompanied by any 

 structural changes either in the nerve tissue or the blood corpus- 

 cles, and that whatever changes occur are merely the result of this 

 suspension and not owing to the direct action of the snake poison. 



2 That the colubrine poison is a pure nerve poison, has been 

 demonstrated by me as well as by the observations of medical men 

 in Australia. We cure our patients suffering from snake poison 

 in a few hours by strychnine injections, even when pulse at wrists 

 and respiration have nearly and sometimes completely ceased, 

 and when the quantity of strychnine required to rouse the para- 

 lysed nerve-cells into action exceeds what in the absence of snake 

 poison would be a fatal dose. Patients regain consciousness and 

 the use of their limbs at once, and in a very short time recover 

 completely, without showing the slightest sign of blood-poisoning 

 or any other structural lesion. 



3 Of vipers we have none in Australia excepting the death-adder 

 (Acantophis antarctica). Persons bitten by this deadly snake have 

 also been treated with strychnine injections and with the same 

 favourable result. This snake, however, is not a jiure viper. It 

 has permanently erect poison-fangs like our colu brines, but they 

 are perforated like those of the vipers and not merely grooved like 

 those of all other Australian snakes. It also has the body of a 

 viper and its poison more nearly approaches the viper poison in 

 its effects, as it acts with special emphasis on the vaso-motor 



