460 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
exactitude in simultaneous administration are perfectly obtained in 
the first series, and it, therefore, should constitute the basis for 
comparison between antivenenes derived from different sources ; 
and as upon the results of the fourth series must depend the actual 
practical application of antivenene to the treatment of poisoning by 
serpents’ bites. 
In the experiments of the first series^ the doses of cobra venom 
administered were the minimum-lethal, twice the minimum-lethal, 
thrice the minimum lethal, and four times the minimum-lethal. In 
the case of each dose, experiments were made with different quan- 
tities of antivenene so as to determine the smallest quantity required 
to prevent death. In order to render it certain, in this and the other 
series, that a lethal dose was always administered in the experiments 
with the so-called minimum-lethal, the minimum-lethal indicated by 
the previous experiments was not used, but instead of it a slightly 
larger dose (*00026 instead of *000245 grm. per kilogramme). 
When this certainly lethal dose, capable of causing death in five 
or six hours, was mixed with antivenene and the mixture then 
injected under the skin, it was found that so small quantities of 
antivenene were sufficient to prevent death, as *5 c.c., *25, *1, *05, 
•02, -01, -005, -004 c.c. (J, of a c.c.) for each 
kilogramme of the weight of the animal. With *0025 c.c. ( 4 ^), 
however, the animal died. The antivenene was therefore found 
to be so powerful as an antidote, in the conditions of these 
experiments, that even the part of a cubic centimetre, equiva- 
lent to about one part of a minim, acted as an efficient 
antidote. Even with the smaller of these doses of antivenene, 
there was almost no symptom of poisoning produced. In the 
experiments of this series with twice the minimum-lethal dose, 
recovery occurred when the doses of antivenene were *75 c.c., *7 c.c. 
and *6 c.c. per kilogram, but *5 c.c. per kilogram failed to prevent 
death. In the experiments with thrice the minimumdethal dose of 
venom (a dose capable of producing death in less than two hours), 
recovery occurred when the doses of antivenene were 1*5 c.c. and 
1 C.C., but death occurred with *8 c»c. And even the enormous dose 
of four times the minimum-lethal failed to produce death, or indeed 
any observable disturbance, when it had previously been mixed with 
2 c.c. of antivenene for each kilogramme of animal. 
