1878.] 



Prof. Pedler on Cobra Poison. 



27 



formed. By the experiments of otlier investigators on the subject of 

 snake poisoning, it has been found that the rapidity of the absorption of 

 cobra poison is quite marvellous, and from the beginning I clearly saw 

 that this would be the cause from which in all probability all experi- 

 ments for the discovery of a true antidote would fail. So far as I 

 could ascertain the non-success of the experiments about to be de- 

 scribed appeared to be due to this cause ; I first experimented upon 

 chickens in the manner described above, and found that in two cases 

 out of three life was prolonged to a very considerable extent, but I 

 did not succeed in preventing death. 

 The results are given in Table E. 



Table E. — Experiments on Chickens. 

 Injection of Platinum Salt after Poisoning by Cobra Virus. 



~No. of 

 Experi- 

 ment. 



Amount of 

 Cobra 

 Poison. 



Interval before 

 Injection of 

 PtCl 4 . 



Amount of 

 PtCl 4 . 



Duration 

 of Experi- 

 ment. 



Result. 



1 



2 

 3 



^ milligram 



To » 



i 



4 » 



5 minutes 

 1 minute 

 1 „ 



•025 gram 

 •05 „ 

 •015 „ 



lirs. min. 

 2 2 

 1 5 



11 47 



Death 



5 J 



In Experiment No. 1 the amount of poison injected (enough to kill 

 seven fowls) would, under ordinary circumstances, kill in about an hour 

 or an hour and a quarter, but the animal here lived more than two hours. 

 In Experiment No. 2 the poison would, under ordinary circumstances, 

 kill in about an hour and a half, but in the experiment in question it 

 killed in one hour and five minutes. This showed me a defect in my mode 

 of working, in fact by injecting the platinum solution into the same 

 orifice as the poison, and to about the same depth beneath the skin, I 

 had merely driven the poison along before the second solution, and 

 thus diffused it more rapidly through the system, naturally causing 

 death to result in a shorter time than would have otherwise been the 

 case. I should here mention that the same remark applies to some of 

 the experiments I made on dogs described in the next table. In 

 Experiment No. 3 in Table E, the amount of poison injected into the 

 chicken was enough to kill three or four chickens, and would under 

 ordinary circumstances have killed in from an hour and a half to one 

 hour and forty minutes. In this case to avoid the defect in Experi- 

 ment No. 2, the platinum solution was injected rather deeper than the 

 poison, and the result was that the animal lived for eleven hours forty- 

 seven minutes, or more than seven times as long as would have been 

 the case had no platinum salt been injected. This was of coarse 

 encouraging, and seemed to promise that the platinum salt would in 

 certain circumstances be useful. The experiments made on dogs are 



