240 C. J. MARTIN AND J. McGARVIE SMITH. 
THE VENOM OF THE AUSTRALIAN BLACK SNAKE, 
(Pseudechis porphyriacus ). 
By C. J. Martin, M.B., B.Sc. Lond., Demonstrator of Physiology in 
the University of Sydney, and J. McGarviz SMITH. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, August 3, 1892. ] 
TuHE literature of the chemistry of Australian snake poison is 
very scanty, and with the exception of a few stray observations, 
which will be mentioned later, there has been no investigation 
from a chemical standpoint. 
_This paucity of literature is not surprising, when one considers » 
that those who have interested themselves in the subject of snake 
poison, have almost exclusively, been gentlemen engaged in the 
practice of medicine, having neither time nor opportunity for 
chemical work, but who have used their best endeavours to find a 
successful method of treatment in cases of snake bite. 
A complete investigation into the subject of snake poison must 
attempt to answer three questions : 
(1) What is the poison ? 
(2) What is its exact physiological action ? 
(3) How can one best prevent or counteract this action ? 
We venture to suggest that the majority of previous workers 
have begun at the wrong end, for out of about four hundred 
references which we have consulted on the subject of snake poison 
over three hundred are to papers in which the author answers to 
his own satisfaction this third question, and describes the bene- 
ficial results following the administration of some such potent 
drug as ash-tea, or human saliva, and the utter and entire futility 
of the whiskey or any other treatment. 
A chemical investigation into the poison of Australian snakes 
is beset with even greater difficulties than is the case elsewhere, — 
