36 SNAKE-POISON AND ITS ACTION. 



like the purest air, whilst pricking, beating, and even 

 burning the skin elicit not a quiver of a muscle. 



Feoktistow's experiments with regard to reflexes, 

 more especially their restoration by strychnine, differ 

 in their results entirely from Australian observations. 

 Whilst we have no difficulty in restoring them with 

 the drug on man as well as the domestic animals, his 

 experiments on frogs were a failure, and merely showed 

 a decided antagonism between the two poisons. He 

 did not succeed in restoring the reflexes, and, instead 

 of following up with experiments on the higher animals, 

 he trusted implicitly to his results on frogs, and thus 

 lost his opportunity. 



G Irregularities in the Action of 

 Snake-poison. 



There is in the whole range of toxicology not a 

 single condition known to us in which the symptoms, 

 both in chronological order and in their strength and 

 relation to each other, show as much variety as those 

 of snake-poison. Experienced observers will agree 

 with the writer that it is but rarely we find two cases 

 of snakebite exactly alike in the symptoms they pre- 

 sent. Some of , these puzzling variations have already 

 been alluded to, but it is necessary to consider them a 

 little more in detail. Apart from quantitative differ- 

 ences in the poison imparted, they arise principally 

 from the strange capriciousness with which the poison 



