160 VENOMS 



proteid substances to which venom owes its physiological pro- 

 perties. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the chemistry of the 

 albuminoid matters is still too imperfect for it to be possible for 

 us to deteiiuine their nature. 



As early as 1843 it was pointed out by Lucien Bonaparte that 

 in the venom of Vipera herus the most important principle is 

 a proteid substance to which he gave the name of viperin or 

 echidnin, and which he compared to the digestive ferments. 

 Later on Weir Mitchell and Eeichert, and subsequently Norris 

 Wolfenden, Pedlav, Wall, Kanthack, C. J. Martin, and MacG-arvie 

 Smith, showed that venoms, like diastases, exhibit a great com- 

 plexity in composition ; that all their characteristic toxic constit- 

 uents are precipitable by absolute alcohol, and that the precipitate, 

 when redissolved in water, recovers the properties possessed by 

 the venom before precipitation. 



According to Armand Gautier,^ venoms contain alkaloids. The 

 latter may be obtained, in very small amounts, however, by finely 

 pulverizing dried venom with carbonate of soda, and systematically 

 exhausting the mixture with alcoholic ether at a temperature of 

 50° C. These alkaloids have yielded crystallized chloraurates and 

 chloroplatinates, and slightly deliquescent crystallized chlorhy- 

 drates. The latter produce Prussian blue when treated with very 

 dilute ferric salts, and mixed with a little red prussiate. They 

 therefore represent reductive bodies analogous to ptomaines. 



Norris Wolfenden did not succeed in extracting these alkaloids 

 from Cobra-venom, whence they had nevertheless been isolated 

 by Armand Gautier. Wolcott Gibbs, and afterwards Weir 

 Mitchell and Eeichert, likewise failed to find them in Crotalus- 

 venom. The toxicity of these bases is, moreover, but very slight, 

 for the totality of the alkaloids extracted by A. Gautier from 

 0'3 gramme of Cobra- venom did not kill a small bird. 



It is therefore to the toxalhumins that the toxic properties of 

 venoms are essentially due. 



' Bulletin de VAcadimie de Midecine, t. x., 1883, p. 947. 



