72 INDIAN SNAKE POISONS, 



is such a marked symptom of cobra-poisoning, is absent 

 in daboia-poisoning. The tongue, it is true, may be 

 sometimes pendulous during part of the time ; but it is 

 usually retracted into the mouth before death, which 

 never happens in cobra-poisoning. Moreover, the 

 larynx is not paralysed, the dog groaning, screaming, 

 and harking, even when his limbs are powerless. It 

 seems as if the poison exerted its influence on the main 

 motor tract, and did not possess the marked affinity for 

 certain centres that cobra-poison has ; a circumstance 

 for which the method in which it commences its action, 

 and the time that it takes to extinguish the respiratory 

 function, might have prepared us. 



Action of Daboia-Poison on Ekspiration. 



When primary convulsions occur in daboia-poisoning, 

 the natural respiration is very quickly abolished. Chart 

 No. 6, taken from a fowl,'gives a typical example of the 

 respiration when the primary convulsions are fatal. It 

 contains nearly all the chest movements from the 

 moment of injection of the poison till death. The first 

 sixteen respirations are normal ; the excursus is then 

 slightly increased, and a slight retardation is to be 

 observed; then, without further warning, the most 

 violent convulsions took place, and with them life was 

 extinguished. It affofds corroborative evidence of the 

 fact that asphyxia has nothing to do with the causation 



