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wourali poison, does not promise much ; indeed it has before 

 been tried without success. The wourali owes its toxic 

 effects to an alkaloid curarine producing muscular paralysis 

 by a specific action on the motor-nerves, whilst snake-poison 

 appears rather to act as an animal ferment exciting diseased 

 action in the blood ; the affection of the lungs is quite 

 secondary to that of the blood. The action of snake-poison 

 appears to be not 'dissimilar in kind from that of mad-dog 

 poison; both are toxic principles residing in a natural 

 salivary secretion ; and the analogy will be more apparent if 

 it be remembered that hydrophobia has been produced in 

 man by the bite of a dog not apparently affected with rabies.* 



My own opinion regarding the nature of snake-poison 

 may ' be thus stated : — In certain' of the salivary glands of 

 snakes there is secreted a ferment analogous to the ptyaline 

 of the salivary glands of mammals. This ferment belongs 

 to the class of albuminoid substances in which several other 

 ferments are comprised, ptyaline, pancreatine, pepsine, 

 diastase, emulsine, &c., and like them its power is limited 

 (that is, it becomes exhausted when it has produced an 

 effect proportionate to the dose used, not being renewed at 

 the expense of the substance acted on as in the case of most 

 vegetable ferments). There are several kinds of it which 



* Such cases are rare, but there is not the slightest doubt that they 

 occur. Since writing the above lines, I saw in the Lancet of 29th 

 March 1873, an account of a death from hydrophobia, in the person 

 of a medical practitioner in Jamaica ; he had been bitten a few 

 months before by a pet dog, which was in perfect health at the time 

 of his death. Another case is recorded in the Madras Medical Journal 

 for March 1872. There is ample evidence that a dog free from any 

 symptom of rabies may secrete saliva producing hydrophobia when 

 inoculated in man ; but there is no evidence to show whether the 

 secretion of the toxic saliva was spontaneous or consequent on the 

 bite of a dog either rabid or similarly affected. If it arose spontane- 

 ously, might not the property become hereditary ? 



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