84 CONCLUSION. 



for the child was rapidly sinking and had almost ceased 

 to breathe. One twelfth of a grain of strychnine was 

 therefore injected in the arm, a bold dose for so young 

 a child, but, as the result showed, exactly the one that 

 was required. The test was eminently successful. 

 Having to leave the child immediately after the injec- 

 tion, the writer on returning in half an hour found his 

 little- patient sitting up in bed, perfectly restored, with 

 both poisons so completely neutralising each other, 

 that not a trace of either could be detected. Thus 

 the writer's structure was at last completed, and an 

 insignificant spider furnished the last material required 

 for an important discovery. 



There are a few hypothetical points yet in the ex- 

 planation of some of the symptoms of snakebite- 

 poisonirig by the writer's theory, but these imperfec- 

 tions are more those of science than of the theory. 

 The whole subject of vaso-motor paralysis for instance, 

 and of the pathological changes that follow it, is more 

 or less a terra incognita. Diapedesis is now supposed 

 to be the result of blood pressure, but it occurs in 

 snakebite, when blood pressure is at zero. Feoktistow, 

 we have seen, produced it locally on the mesentery of 

 animals with normal blood pressure, whilst Banerjee 

 arrested by strychnine-injections profuse haemorrhages 

 from all the mucous surfaces, which were no doubt the 

 result of diapedesis. We know that neither snake- 

 poison nor strychnine affect the nerve ends but only 

 the nerve cells. There must therefore be nerve cells 

 at or near the terminations of the nerves regulating 



