CHAPTER I. 



PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VENOM. 



Physical Characteristics of Venom. — All serpent venoms are more or less alike 

 in appearance when fresh. They are fluids varying in color from the palest amber 

 tint to a deep yellow. Dr. Wall describes the Cobra venom as being occasionally 

 colorless. This peculiarity we have never seen in the fresh poison of any of our 

 serpents, except once in the coral snake ; nor can the venom of one kind of snake 

 be distinguished with certainty by any physical peculiarity from that of any other, 

 however remote they may be in the scale of being. 



When a fluid venom is allowed to dry slowly it presents no specific distinctive 

 appearances. If desiccated too rapidly, it may look a little more gray and opaque 

 than is common, but usually it dries into a beautifully cracked mass, deceptively 

 like an aggregation of crystals, and which is well represented in Fig. 2. 



Fig. 2. 



In this state it is in solid yellow particles, very fragile, bright yellow, trans- 

 parent or translucent, and seemingly indestructible by time, since the dried venom 

 of the rattlesnake, for twenty-two years in Dr. Mitchell's possession, proved as 

 poisonous as that removed yesterday. It is equally unaltered by solution in 

 glycerin, which keeps it permanently in unchanged toxic force, as we shall here- 



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