SNAKBl-POISON AND ITS ACTION. 37 



concentrates its action on special nerve centres and 

 leaves others comparatively intact. 



The nearest approach to regularity and orderly 

 sequence of the symptoms, as described in the fore- 

 going pages, we find in Australia after the bite of the 

 tiger snake [Hoplocephalus curtus) and the brown 

 snake (Diemenia superciliosa), more especially that of 

 Queensland. Here we can trace the action of the 

 poison distinctly from centre to centre, from the lowest 

 part of the anterior cornua up to the coi^tex cerebri, 

 and even throughout the sympathetic ganglia as far as 

 they are patent to observation. The poison of these 

 snakes is extremely diffusible and quickly absorbed. 

 It spreads with rapidity and nearly equal foi'ce over 

 all the motor centres, the symptoms following each 

 other so quickly as almost to appear simultaneous, 

 though, in reality, successive. But even the poison of 

 these snakes leaves the arms only slightly paretic, when 

 paralysis in all the other voluntary muscles is well 

 pronounced, and does not paralyse them until coma has 

 set in. It also touches the respiratory centre but 

 slightly. Sometimes coma is light and the patients 

 can be roused for a little while, at other times it is deep 

 and lasts till death. But even greater variations are 

 observed occasionally. In one very extraordinary case 

 of tiger snakebite, the patient, a child of 9 years, 

 remained conscious to the last, and after vomiting 

 blood freely died under symptoms of heart failure. In 

 rare cases the symptoms resemble those of cobra 

 poison. 



