254 



VENOMOUS ANIMALS 



Alcoholic Extract. 



Carbon . . 

 Nitrogen. . 

 Hydrogen 

 Sulphur . . 

 Ash 



45-76 

 14-30 

 6- 60 



2-50 



Traces. 



These figures merely indicate the presence of proteid in some 

 form, and, as a matter of fact, Armstrong found reactions indicating 

 the presence of albumin; but it must be remembered that Prince 

 Charles Lucien Bonaparte had already shown that a proteid existed 

 in the venom of the viper, and that the toxicity was carried down 

 with this when precipitated, and, further, that Weir Mitchell had 

 corroborated his statements while examining Crotalus-venom, 



Weir Mitchell and Reichert went further, and discovered tox- 

 albumins of the nature of globulins (which must be considered to 

 include the more modem proteoses) in venom. They considered 

 these proteids, which they found to be poisonous, to be the true 

 active principles of the' venom. In this they have received support 

 from Phisalix and Bertrand, who separated from viper- venom two 

 toxalbumins — echidin, which acts locally; and echitoxin, which 

 acts generally — and also from C. J. Martin and Smith, who showed 

 that the proteoses consisted of proto- and heteroproteose, with 

 perhaps a little deuteroproteose, and that true peptones were 

 absent. 



The reader will, therefore, not be surprised to hear that venom 

 gives proteid reactions— ^.g., Millon's, the xanthoproteic and the 

 biuret — and that precipitates appear on the addition of picric acid, 

 copper sulphate, and alcohol, and on saturation with sodium 

 chloride, magnesium chloride, or ammonium chloride, and, lastly, 

 that it coagulates on heating. 



With regard to heat, it is found that viperine venoms more 

 readily lose their toxicity than colubrine — e.g., 80° to 85° C. will 

 destroy most of the former .venoms, while it takes 120° C. to do 

 the same to those of the latter with certainty. 



If venom is only heated to the temperature of first coagulation, 

 and then filtered, it will be found, that the filtrate still gives a 

 precipitate with alcohol, and is still active, though its virulence 

 is diminished, and that this action is mostly on the nervous 

 system. 



The analysis of venom, however, does not stop with toxalbumins, 

 for, as Ewing pointed out long ago, they contain true toxins allied 

 to those produced by bacteria, and recently Faust has separated 

 from the toxalbumins a very poisonous non-nitrogenous substance 

 called ophiotoxin. 



The. knowledge of these toxins is principally due to the work of 

 Flexner and Noguchi on the venoms of Crotalus durissus, Ancis- 

 trodon piscivorus, A . contortrix, and Naja tripudians. 



The work of these investigators, coupled with that of C. J. 

 Martin, Calmette, Lamb, Weir Mitchell, Reichert, Stewart, Rogers, 

 and others,[have shown that snake-venoms are very complex liquids 



