after Death from Snake-bite. 91 
explanation, but as Mr. Paget remarks, the problem is too 
difficult while the data are so few and the unknown things 
so many.” 
I must however say, I have met with no record. of such 
movements after death by snake-bite, but at the same time 
the observers have been few and their attention not directed 
to any phenomena occurring soon after death. 
_ I must now bring before this Society a remark made to 
me by Dr. Moussé, of the Melbourne Hospital. It was to 
the effect that the man bitten by the cobra when brought to 
the hospital was like one in the cold stage of cholera, and 
at the post-mortem examination he said that, with the ex- 
ception of not being so thick, the blood was just like that of 
a cholera patient. Of cholera Dr. Moussé has had much 
experience. 
I now come lastly to the remarkable and solitary case 
of cholera to which, when speaking of the presence of 
foreign cells in the blood of the snake-poisoned man, I said 
I should refer. Dr. James M. Cowan, in the Edinburgh 
Monthly Journal, observes of the body of a woman who had. 
died of cholera, “there was not a single morbid appearance 
which could be held as accounting for the cause of death,” 
but “on examining a drop of blood under a power of 240 
linear diameters, in addition to the red and white corpuscles 
were numerous other bodies, which could not fail to attract 
notice, generally circular in shape; some however oviform ; 
a few caudate, and composed of a well detined membrane, 
not at all puckered, enclosing one or two distinct granules. 
These were very small, quite round in form, and possessed 
of clear centres. They appeared to be attached in general 
to one of the extremities of the circumference of the cor- 
puscle ; in some cases it was difficult to say whether they 
were adherent to its interior or exterior.” The doctor was 
totally unable to account for their appearance. 
But other observers, such as Virchow, have said that there 
is an increase of the white corpuscles in the blood of cholera 
patients. Can it be possible that this eminent man has 
mistaken foreign cells for the white corpuscle?, I think 
not. I should rather suppose he speaks of the observations 
of others, and yet it must be remembered that on my first 
hasty examination of the snake-poisoned blood I took the new 
cells for white corpuscles, but afterwards, with my own 
instrument, immediately saw my mistake. ) 
It cannot be unreasonable to suppose that as both the 
H 2 : 
