after Death from Snake-bite. 87 
be diligently looked for where indeed their presence has long 
been suspected, viz., in the blood. 
Respecting the development of animal and vegetable life 
in different media as the probable cause of the various pro- 
cesses of fermentation, Sir Henry Holland observes: “It is 
one of those curious questions where doubt exists as to the 
respective conditions—which is cawse, which effect, in their 
mutual relation? Such doubt is generally solved in the 
event by some simple and single observation, deciding not 
merely the particular problem, but opening a way to know- 
ledge beyond.” : 
I now pass to consider Cholera. Discarding contradictory 
accounts, I shall quote principally from the last edition of 
Aitkin’s Science and Practice of Medicine, and from 
Holland’s Medical Notes and Reflections, and Watson’s 
Practice of Physve. 
Dr. Aitkin says: “The remote cause of this disease is 
unquestionably a poison ; for at no period has a person in 
good health in this or any other country been known to 
become in a few minutes shrivelled up, his whole body to 
be of an icy coldness, his face and extremities to turn purple, 
and, with or without vomiting of a peculiar fluid like rice- 
water, to die in a few hours, except under the influence of a 
poison.” ‘Tbe doctrine now, therefore, universally accepted 
regarding the pathology of cholera is that a poison has been 
absorbed, and infects the blood ; that after a longer or shorter 
time it produces a primary disease of the blood; that it 
undergoes enormous multiplication in the living body of 
the cholera patient, as a result of the morbid process so 
established; and that changes are induced in the function of 
respiration directly consequent upon this alteration of the 
blood.” 
This is, you observe, the pathology of snake-poisoning, so 
far as I can apprehend it. 
Sir Henry Holland says: “ Singular though the symptoms 
of cholera are, in their suddenness and fatality, they offer 
no difficulty which does not equally belong to other 
kindred diseases. We may even go a step further and affirm 
that the notion of an animal virus, applied to absorbing 
surfaces, and engendering the disorder by entering into the 
circulation, is that which on the whole best accords with 
the character of the disease, and with the analogies most 
obvious to other morbid affections. We have many proofs 
of the power and virulence of different poisons of this class, 
