48 THE ANTIDOTE. 



apply them fearlessly by injecting what to us Aus- 

 tralians appear enormous quantities, ranging as they 

 do up to three and four grains per patient. Dr. 

 Banerjee's eight cases, all successful, and of which 

 the most important one, relating to the much and 

 justly dreaded Duboia Russellii, was published in the 

 November number of the Australasian Medical Gazette, 

 settled the treatment of snakebite in India as well as 

 elsewhere. If the poison of Bungarus coeruleus, Echis 

 carinata, and Duboia Russellii can be successfully 

 counteracted, and if for this purpose lour grains of 

 strychnine can be injected with perfect impunity, it 

 may be inferred with certainty that the poison of the 

 cobra, fer-de-lance, and the rattlesnake — in fact, of 

 any snake known to us — will be found amenable to 

 the antidote, and that, if four grains can be injected 

 with safety, we may venture on six and eight grains, if 

 they are required. In those cases only where the long 

 fangs of these snakes perforate into a vein, and a large 

 quantity of the venom injected into the blood-stream 

 overpowers the nerve-centres so as to make death 

 imminent, if not almost instantaneous, the subcutaneous 

 injections may be found of little use. Here intravenous 

 injections of half a grain and even one grain doses 

 would appear to be indicated, and might yet fan the 

 flame of life afresh, even when respiration and pulse at 

 wrist have already ceased. We have seen both these 

 functions extinct in Australia . and restored by com- 

 paratively small doses of the antidote, and can see no 



