176 THE LAND MARKS OF SNAKE-POISON LITERATURE. 



respectively subjected to the ammonia treatment and 

 left alone, the results obtained are equally emphatic. 

 Four such victims were treated by ammonia injection, 

 and lived from two hours and eighteen minutes the 

 longest period, to nineteen minutes the shortest, the 

 average being one hour and twenty-seven minutes. Eight 

 dogs were bitten and left to struggle against the poison, 

 and lived from sixty-six hours and forty-eight minutes 

 (the longest time) to fifty-two minutes (the shortest), 

 the average being twelve hours and twenty-seven 

 minutes or nine times as long as their fellow sufferers 

 who were taken in hand by the experimenters for 

 cure. In the face of these facts it is not possible to 

 deny the accuracy of the statement made by Fontana 

 in the eighteenth century, and echoed by Mr. Vincent 

 Kichards in the nineteenth, that to inject ammonia is 

 simply to do one's best to make sure of death." 



And yet, as I have said, we still find this 

 method of treatment receiving the countenance 

 of some writers of standard works. 



