: a 
206 C. J. MARTIN. e 
and the intima of the aorta and large blood vessels. There is : 
also another situation where a small hemorrhage is almost invari- _ ‘ 
ably found, viz.: under the endocardium of the left ventricle, 
Feoktistow! mentions the constant occurrence of a heenion hana ce 
this situation in his experiments with viperine venom. , 
The full development of all these hemorrhagic phan onicll 
requires some hours. When venom is intravenously injected, the : 
immediate great fallin blood pressure prevents for the time being ; 
the damaged condition of the vascular walls being demonstrated. — 
Subsequently, the escape of blood takes place more and noe i 
the pressure gradually rises after the initial fall. 
All kinds of snake venoms which have hitherto been examine(, ? 
have been shown to contain in varying amount amongst their 
albuminous constituents a proteid or proteids coagulable by heat. 
It is of iderable i t that the viperine poisons which contain 
coaguable proteids in largest amount, exercise this destructive — 
action on blood corpuscles and the walls of blood vessels, to the 
greatest extent, whereas cobra venom, which contains less than 
2’of coagulable proteid, only exerts such action to a comparatively 
slight extent. Boiling, or indeed raising the temperature of the 
solution to 80 — 85° C. deprives venoms of much of their action ae 
this direction, and at the same time largely does away with t 
capacity of Psewdechis poison to produce intravascular clotting. 
The power of this venom to both destroy blood cells and occasi 
thrombosis is however not entirely lost, for by increasing 
dose of heated venom to at least five hundred times that of the | 
unheated poison which is required to produce instant oat: 
thrombosis, the same result is attained. The whole toxle po” 
of the venom is not however attenuated to this extent. 
large series of experiments on rabbits I found that the min! 
dose of Pseudechis poison which when subcutaneously i injee : 
was sure to occasion a fatal issue, was ‘0005 gramme of: 
per kilogramme of rabbit. When the solution of the veno™ "— 
: 
q 
1 Loc, cit. 
