TREATMENT OF POISONOUS SNAKE-BITES 267 



quantity of serum that must be injected in order to prevent death 

 is about thrice as great as that which neutrahses in vitro the dose 

 of venom inoculated. 



It is also found that the amount of curative serum that an 

 animal intoxicated by venom must receive is inversely proportional 

 to its weight. 



The experiments upon dogs, performed at the Pasteur Institute 

 at Lille by my collaborator G. Guerin, are highly demonstrative 

 in this respect.-^ 



A dog of 12 kilogrammes, inoculated with 9 milligrammes of 

 venom (a dose lethal to controls of the same weight in from five 

 to seven hours), is completely cured on receiving, two hours after 

 inoculation with the poison, 10 c.c. of serum. 



When the treatment does not take place until three hours after 

 the injection of the venom, it is necessary to inject 20 cc. of serum 

 in order to prevent the animal from dying. With a longer delay 

 than this, death is inevitable, since the bulbar centres are already 

 affected, and paralysis of the respiratory muscles commences to 

 appear. 



These facts show that : — 



(1) The more sensitive animals are to venom, the greater is the 

 quantity of serum necessary in order to prevent their intoxication 

 by a given dose of venom. 



(2) For a given species of animal and a given dose of venom, 

 the longer the delay in applying the remedy, the greater is the 

 quantity of serum that must be injected in order to arrest the 

 poisoning. 



It will be understood from what has been already stated, that 

 a man weighing 60 kilogrammes, if bitten by a snake which 

 injects, let us say, what would amount to 20 milligrammes of 

 venom if collected in the dry state (the mean quantity that a 



' " Les morsures de viperes chez les animaux," liecueil de medecime veteri- 

 naire d'Alfori, May 15, 1897. 



