12 HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



treatment. Even if nobody died at all its effects in 

 doing away with the misery and suffering, which, 

 before its introduction, invariably followed snakebite, 

 and often was never got rid of completely, would still 

 be sufficiently beneficial to render the senseless opposi- 

 tion to it on the part of a small section of medical men 

 little short of criminal ; for these effects are a matter 

 of constant observation, and cannot, like the rescues 

 from death, be called into- question. 



The statistics brought forward to prove that the 

 treatment has not reduced the death-rate are also most 

 faulty. Until it is thoroughly understood and in every 

 instance properly applied it is manifestly foolish as 

 well as unfair to lay non-success and failures at its 

 door. When a medical man is called upon to treat a 

 serious case, and instead of boldly addressing himself 

 to the task of combating the symptoms by injecting 

 the antidote irrespective of the quantity he may require 

 until it has conquered the snake-poison, becomes 

 nervous and ceases to inject, when, after what in 

 ordinary practice would be a dangerous dose, he sees 

 but little effect, or if from the first he injects small 

 doses at long intervals, the cause of failure surely lies 

 with him and not with the antidote, vrhich rarely fails 

 where it is properly applied. The duty of dissemin- 

 ating a sound knowledge of , the principles of the 

 strychnine treatment unquestionably devolves on our 

 health authorities, who ought, by this time, to have 

 taken some notice of it. But officialdom remains 

 obtuse and issues circulars on the treatment of snake- 



