ON SEEPENT-WORSHIP AND VENOMOUS SNAKES. 119 



observed by Feoktistow on the mesentery of animals sprinkled 

 over slightly with a two per cent, solution of the poison. Wher- 

 ever a drop of the liquid lodged, the blood-vessels were almost 

 immediately dilated and small point - like extravasations of 

 corpuscles became visible. Gradually enlarging, they became- 

 ultimately confluent, forming uniform hemorrhagic surfaces of 

 greater or less extent. 



9 The hemorrhagic process in viperine poisoning extends over 

 all the internal organs, but more especially the heart, and in the 

 pericai'dial sack there is generally a large quantity of a sanguino- 

 serous liquid with numerous blood corpuscles in it. Preparations 

 of the capillaries from any part of the heart, Juiced with chromic acid, 

 shoiv healthy corpuscles in them throughout. 



10 These observations seem to me to place it beyond doubt that 

 the theory of blood-poisoning is not tenable, and that vaso-motor 

 paralysis explains all the blood changes, none of which, moreover, 

 are liable to cause death. The whole group of the phenomena 

 called forth by the subtle ophidian poison, when introduced into 

 animal or man, is thus brought under the operation of one law, the 

 law of suspended motor nerve force, and science has once more ful- 

 filled her noble mission. Walking, so to say, in the footsteps of the 

 Supreme Intelligence that guides the atoms as it rules the worlds, 

 science has discovered the plan and design that underlies the 

 subtle action of snake poison, and by reducing the puzzling 

 symptoms it produces to order, she has at last solved a problem 

 that has for centuries past defied her researches. She has done even 

 more than this. With the first problem solved, with an exact 

 and strictly defined knowledge of the action of snake poison, it 

 was a far less difficult task for her to select as a physiological 

 antidote from the vast storehouse of nature a substance having 

 a directly opposite action to that of snake poison on the human 

 system, and this substance science has found in strychnine 

 administered in large doses by hypodermic injection. Feoktistow, 

 whose researches also led him to experiment with the drug, 

 found it also decidedly antagonistic to snake poison. Unfor- 

 tunately he confined his experiments, as far as can be learned 

 from his work, to frogs only. Finding that strychnine did not 

 re-establish reflex action in these animals, and that they died 

 under the combined influence of the two poisons, he somewhat pre- 

 maturely gave it up as the physiological antidote to snake poison, 

 and being unable to find another one, despaired at the conclusion 

 of his experiments of its being found, in the present state of 

 science, whilst all the time it was lying ready at his hands. He 

 did not sufficiently bear in mind, that experiments with a drug 

 as variable in its effect on different species of animals as strych- 

 nine, more especially when made in combination with snake 

 poison, equally as variable, must be necessarily misleading and 

 unreliable, unless extended over a number of species and, if 



K 



