PREFACE. V. 



on animal life can be ascribed, were in complete har- 

 mony with the writer's views, in fact, a re-statement 

 of his theory. It was a strange coincidence, or what- 

 ever it may be called, that, independent ot each other, 

 at almost opposite parts of the globe, and by opposite 

 methods, we had arrived at almost identical con- 

 clusions. Those of Feoktistow were drawn from 400 

 elaborate experiments on animals, both vertebrates and 

 invertebrates, made in the laboratory of Professor 

 Kobert at the University of Dorpat and in that of 

 Professor Owsjannikow at the Imperial Academy of 

 Sciences of St, Petersburg. The writer's conclusions, 

 on the other hand, resulted entirely from a careful and 

 happy analysis of the symptoms observed at the bed- 

 side of his patients suffering from snakebite. On one 

 point only, but the most important one, he differs 

 from Feoktistow. The latter shared the fate of all 

 previous experimenters on animals. Though his 

 experiments with snake-poison led him to the correct 

 theory of its action, and even to the correct antidote, 

 his experiments with strychnine and snake-poison were 

 a failure. The animals experimented on died, and, 

 falling into the error of his predecessors, mistaking 

 the functional analogy that exists between the nerve 

 centres of the lower animals and those of man for 

 absolute identity, which does not exist, especially not 

 when they are under the influence of the two poisons, 

 he concluded his researches with the confession that a 

 physiological antidote for snake-poison cannot even be 

 thought of at the present state of science. Although, 



