2 INDIAN SNAKE POISONS, 



various poisonous snakes, in order to detect any differ- 

 ences in their effects, paying special attention to those 

 conditions on which the fatal results are dependent, aad 

 any prominent signs that will enahle us, with certainty, 

 to say if, in a given case, we have really to deal with the- 

 results of snake-hite, or not. 



As the cobra {Naja Tripudians) is at the same time 

 the commonest and the most deadly of all Indian 

 poisonous snakes, it will be best first to consider the 

 symptoms produced by it, and the ways in which its 

 poison may be fatal. To do this it will be necessary to 

 detail a suflBcient number of experiments to bring into 

 prominence all the characteristic symptoms of cobra 

 poisoning, and from them to deduce the direct causes of 

 death. We shall then have a standard by which we 

 shall be able to contrast the effects of the poisons of the 

 other species of venomous snakes. 



To begin with the symptoms as they occur in human 

 beings; the following is an account, by Dr. Hilson, of a 

 case that came under his own observation : — 



"On a night in June, at about half-past 12 o'clock, 

 Dabee, a Hindu punkah coolie, was bitten on the 

 shoulder by a cobra, whilst sleeping. On inspecting 

 the wound, there were found over the prominence of 

 the right deltoid muscle, and about three quarters of an 

 inch apart, two large drops of a clear serous-like fluid 

 tinged with blood, which had apparently oozed from two 

 small punctures, so minute that they could not be 



