320 CLASS REPTILIA. 



altogether the case. The experiments of the scientific Italian 

 have had the fate of all physiological experiments founded 

 on calculation. Ulterior facts have overturned the conse- 

 quences deduced from them. Dr. Paulet, in his observations 

 on the viper of Fontainbleau, published in 1805, says that 

 an infant of seven years and a half old, bitten under the 

 internal malleolus of the right foot by a reptile of this 

 species, died at the expiration of seventeen hours ; another 

 infant, two years of age, expired in two days after having 

 been bitten in the cheek. Still more recently Dr. Hervez 

 de Chegoni, saw at Entrains, a small town of the department 

 of the Nievre, a woman sixty-four years old, of a good 

 constitution, and in good health, expire with the most la- 

 mentable symptoms, thirty-seven hours after having been 

 bitten in the thigh only once by a single viper. 



The opinion therefore of Fontana, which is still maintained 

 by many persons, does by no means appear to be well- 

 founded. The medical men who hold it do not seem to take 

 into consideration, that in the case in question, as in most 

 pathological affections, climate, season, age, temperament of 

 the individual, &c., are so many causes which must mar- 

 vellously influence the nature and progress of the symptoms 

 occasioned by the bite of venomous ophidians. The struc- 

 ture of the wounded organ and its connections are also 

 equally deserving of attention under this point of view. 

 Thus M. Bosc relates that during his stay in America, two 

 horses in one enclosure were bitten on the same day by a 

 black viper, one in the hind leg, the other in the tongue. 

 The last died in less than an hour, while the other escaped 

 with a swelling which lasted for a few days, and a weakness 

 for a few weeks ; the death of the first was occasioned by 

 the violent inflammation which closed up the glottis and 

 brought on an asphyxia. 



This poison, furthermore, at least in the viper, does not 



