272 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sometimes recover. If the poison is discharged into the arteries or 

 veins, the vital functions directly fail, " the victim staggers, and falls 

 from exhaustion — depressing gloom settles on the features — a cold 

 sweat comes upon the face — and death at once supervenes." In such 

 cases the blood is unchanged, and appears healthy ; but, where the 

 effect is not immediate, it undergoes change — " ceases to coagulate, 

 the fibrine disappears, and the patient dies with ordinary symptoms 

 of slow poisoning." 



A multitude of remedies have been suggested for the bite of ser- 

 pents; of these, ammonia and alcohol are prominent. Prof. Halfourd, 

 of Australia, reported the recovery of seventeen out of twenty cases of 

 severe bites, from the injection of a solution of ammonia into the veins. 

 The free use of alcohol in some form has been stoutly advocated by 

 many physicians, while others assert that patients have died from the 

 poison even while intoxicated by the remedy. An exhaustive paper 



Fig. 14. 



Blind or Slow Worm. 



on rattlesnake-bites, and their remedy, by Dr. Mitchell, was published 

 in "No. 12 of the " Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge," to which 

 we are indebted for several interesting statements, and to which we 

 refer our readers. 



The conclusions of Dr. Fayrer, from his exhaustive experiments 

 upon snake-poisoning in India, are, that most of the popular remedies 

 are of little value, and he seems to differ somewhat from Prof. Hal- 

 fourd. The celebrated snake-stones, which are said to " absorb and 

 suck out the poison," he " believes are perfectly powerless to produce 

 any such effect." He advises ligature to prevent, if possible, the pas- 

 sage of the poison into the circulation. Whiskey and ammonia are 



