184 



Capt. K. H. Elliot. A Contribution to the [Jan. 18, 



Cunningham in the ' Scientific Memoirs by Medical Officers of the 

 Army in India '* urged the opposing theory that Cobra venom acted 

 on respiration, through the blood and not through the nervous system. 



"Weir Mitchell, and Eeichertf carried on Brunton and Fayrer's 

 views. Their paper was mainly concerned with the venoms of other 

 snakes than the Cobra. They thought two factors were at work 

 on the rate of the heart, viz., an increased activity of the accelerator 

 centres, quickening the beat, and a direct action on the heart slowing 

 it. They attributed the primary fall in blood pressure to depression 

 of the vaso-motor centres, but thought it might be partly cardiac. 

 The rise they considered " capillary " and the final fall cardiac. 



Bagotzij laid great stress on the rdle played by nerve-end paralyses 

 (especially phrenic), and disputed Brunton's views that respiration was 

 attacked through the medullary centre. He did not find any action 

 of the venom on the vagal mechanism. He surmised that death with 

 a tightly contracted heart, the result of very large doses of venom, was 

 due to a cardiac action. 



C. J. Martin in the article on snake venom in ' Allbutt's System of 

 Medicine,' considers that, in Cobra poisoning, the circulatory mechanism 

 is not easily affected, and contrasts this with the state of affairs in 

 viperine poisoning. He found that vagal stimulations stopped the 

 heart up to near the end of life in Cobra poisoning. 



Object of this Research. 



This was to accurately ascertain the precise part played by the 

 various important centres, nerves and organs in the production of death 

 from cobraism. 



Methods employed in the Research. 



1. Perfusion of the frog vessels was carried out with solutions of Cobra 

 venom of various strengths. — The central nervous system had been 

 destroyed first in each case. 



The strength-limitation of the action of the venom on the arterioles 

 was carefully studied. 



2. Perfusion of frog hearts was carried out with solutions of Cobra venom 

 of various strengths. — The isolated hearts were perfused in Schafer's 

 plethysmograph, and blood mixture was employed as the vehicle for 

 the poison. The strength-limitation of the action of Cobra venom was 

 again determined here. Certain drugs which resemble this poison in 

 their action on heart muscle, were also experimented with, e.g., 

 strophanthin and the sulphate of atropia. The risks apparently 



* 1895, Part IX, and 1898, Part XI. 



f ' Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,' 1890. 



X Yirchow's ' Archir fur Path.,' vol. 122, p. 201. 



