4 HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



opportunities for observation on man would supply, 

 his resort was usually experiments on animals. A few 

 snakes were caught, a few luckless dogs or other 

 animals procured, and the slaughter of the innocents 

 began. 



As test experiments to confirm observations on 

 man, or made with a view of finding a correct theory 

 of the action of snake-poison, these attempts were 

 unobjectionable, although, without an elaborate scien- 

 tific apparatus and in other than skilled hands, they were 

 not likely to produce results of any value. But most 

 of the experimenters were not content with purely 

 theoretical aims. They were seeking to find the anti- 

 dote by a purely empirical method, and had nothing to 

 guide them in the choice of drugs. A dose ot snake- 

 poison was administered to an animal, and then a dose 

 of some drug or chemical, chosen ad libitum, sent after 

 it. Next day another presumed antidote was tried, 

 another animal slaughtered, and so on ad nauseam, 

 until finally the baffled antidote-searcher, not one whit 

 the wiser for all his trouble and the useless tortures 

 inflicted, confessed himself beaten and joined in the 

 " non possumus " of his predecessors. 



One important point has been completely left out 

 of sight and ignored in all this experimenting on 

 animals. It is the fact that the action of snake-poison 

 on the human system and on that of animals, more 

 especially dogs, though very similar, is not absolutely 

 identical, and that for this reason alone results of 

 experiments on the latter cannot be indiscriminately 



