oie ee 
PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF VENOM OF BLACK SNAKE. 273 
of exit. When a few milligrammes of venom are injected into a 
rabbit, it is not an easy matter to find it again, even supposing it 
has all passed through the kidneys, especially as in these circum- 
stances the urine always contains albumen. The very simple 
method which has been adopted with cobra poison of inoculating 
frogs with the urine itself is open to the objection that ‘5 cc. of 
rabbit’s normal fresh urine kills the frogs we have in this part of 
the world with symptoms of paralysis, exactly resembling the 
effect of venom. Moreover, these frogs are actually more resistant 
to Pseudechis venom than rabbits, notwithstanding the fact that 
the latter are nearly one hundred times as heavy. Accordingly, 
even supposing all the venom to have passed into the urine, it 
would, in most cases, be necessary to inject the whole amount of 
this fluid, to produce a fatal result, and although one could easily 
drown the frog in the urine, the other alternative would be an 
obvious impossibility. 
Whether the poison makes its exit through the kidneys or not, 
these organs are always more or less affected. It is not uncommon 
to find radial hemorrhages in the cortex, from the interlobular 
vessels: The kidneys undergo a further important pathological 
change which is confined to the cortical portion, and consists in an 
acute necrosis of the epithelium lining the convoluted tubes. The 
epithelial cells of these tubes become vacuolated, and then burst, 
leaving the tubule to a large extent bare of epithelium. 
Yet another affection of the kidney remains to be mentioned. 
The hemoglobin from the disintegrated corpuscles exhibits an 
abnormal tendency to crystallise, and this sometimes happens in 
the tubules of the kidney to such an extent as to block the greater 
number, 
“= urine in animals poisoned with Pseudechis venom always 
Contains albumen, Very frequently it contains hemoglobin, and 
in the more serious cases, blood. Fibrinogen also passes through 
the kidneys, and in 
I three or four cases of severe poisoning in dogs, 
have been able to 
of cause the urine to clot solidly by the addition 
"few drops of acetic acid. ‘The blood of these dogs, at the 
R—July 3, 1995, 
