who died by the Bite of a Rattlesnake. 87 
serum in the cellular membrane, which continues to increase 
with greater or less rapidity for about twelve hours, extending 
during that period into the neighbourhood of the bite ; the 
blood ceases to flow in the smaller vessels of the swoln parts ; 
the skin over them becomes quite cold, the action of the heart 
is so weak, that the pulse is scarcely perceptible, and the 
stomach is so irritable, that nothing is retained in it. In about 
6 c hours these symptoms go off) inflammation and suppura- 
tion take place in the injured parts, and when the abscess 
formed is very great, it proves fatal. When the bite has been 
in the finger, that part has immediately mortified. When 
death has taken place under such circumstances, the absorbent 
vessels and their glands, have undergone no change similar 
to the effect of morbid poisons, nor has any part lost its 
natural appearance, except those immediately connected with 
the abscess. 
In those patients, who recover with difficulty from the bite, 
the symptoms produced by it, go off more readily, and more 
completely, than those produced by a morbid poison, which 
has been received into the system. 
The violent effects which the poison produces on the part 
bitten, and on the general system, and the shortness of their 
duration, where they do not terminate fatally, has frequently 
induced the belief, that the recovery depended on the medi- 
cines employed ; and in the East Indies, eau de luce is con- 
sidered as a specific, for the cure of the bite of the cobra di 
capello. 
There does not appear to be any foundation for such an 
opinion ; for when the poison is so intense, as to give a suf- 
ficient shock to the constitution, death immediately takes 
