CASES. 67 



Treated with strychnine and recovered in four days. Was 

 admitted on the I4th September, 1891, and discharged to duty on 

 the 18th September, 1891. Took in all three grains to effect cure. 



Cask 7.— Avghunandan, customs semadar, aged 55 years, 

 Hindu male. Bitten at 8 a.m. on the 29th March, 1892, by echis 

 carinata (brown variety) on the right foot near the cuboid bone. 

 The punctures were distinct and the symptoms like those of case 1. 

 Bleeding was profuse in this case. 



Treatment. — Strychniae acetas injected in qitarier grain doses 

 under the skin and repeated as often as desirable. Patient recovered 

 after the sixth day and took in ail Jour grains of strych. acet. in six 

 days. Only the bitten leg had erysipelatous inflammation, which 

 had to be treated afterwards, but the man was quite safe. 



Remarks. — In connection with echis bites one peculiar symptom 

 was always noticed, namely, the free oozing of blood from raucous 

 surfaces and old scars of wounds. The power of co-ordination was 

 very much affected from the first setting in of other symptoms. 

 Usually after 24 hours symptoms showed a relapse. In the treat- 

 ment with strychnia neither the symptoms of the drug nor of the 

 snake-poison ever showed themselves afterwards. Both seemed to 

 neutralise each other. Bungarus coeruleus, or kerait-bite, had its 

 own peculiar symptoms of cyanotic patches and insensibility, swoon- 

 ing and stertorous breathing. The true comatose state was not 

 present in any, but only a slight one noticed in cases 4 and 5. The 

 other cases were generally delirious in the beginning 



Case 8. — Dr. Banerjee communicated this case to the Austral- 

 asian Medical Gazette separately and quite recently, November, 

 1892. It is, of all his cases, the most important one. He writes: 

 — " The following case increases my number to eight, and should 

 clear away prejudice and prepossessed ideas, as strychnine saved 

 this case, a bite of Buboia Bu^sdlii. This snake is admitted by all 

 hands to be virulently poisonous, and the poison is said to be even 

 piore virulent than that of the dreaded cobra : " — - 



