44 THE ANTIDOTE. 



quantity injected within an hour or two amounts to 

 what in the absence of snake-poison would be a 

 dangerous if not a fatal dose. Timidity in handling 

 the drug is fraught with far more danger than a bold 

 and fearless use of it. The few failures among its 

 numerous successes recorded during the last four years 

 in Australia were nearly all traceable to the antidote 

 not having been injected in sufficient quantity. Even 

 slight tetanic convulsions, which were noticed in a few 

 cases, invariably passed oft quickly. It should be 

 borne in mind that of the two poisons warring with 

 each other that of the snake is by far the most insidious 

 and dangerous one, more especially in its effects on the 

 vaso-motor centres. The latter are wrought very 

 insidiously, and where they predominate require the 

 most energetic use of the antidote, for whilst the timid 

 practitioner after injecting as much strychnine as he 

 deems safe stands idly by waiting for its effects, the 

 snake virus, not checked by a sufficient quantity of it, 

 continues its baneful work, drawing the blood mass 

 into the paralysed abdominal veins and finally by 

 arrested heart action bringing on sudden collapse. In 

 such cases even some tetanic convulsions are of little 

 danger and may actually be necessary to overcome the 

 paralysis of the splanchnicus and with it that of the 

 other vaso-motor centres. 



Whilst then it must be laid down as a principle 

 that the antidote should be administered freely and 

 without regard to the quantity that may be required 

 to develop symptoms of its own physiological action, 



