48 
ON THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF SEKPENTS. 
have dangerous consequences from a concurrence of circum- 
stances, such as the heat of the climate, the mental and 
pathological state of the animal bitten, the fury which 
animates the biter, &c. ; for the same reason, the bite of 
serpents not venomous, may become dangerous even to 
man, when the nature of their saliva has been altered by 
such circumstances. But the poison of venomous snakes 
has peculiar deleterious qualities naturally, although the 
circumstances to which we have alluded may contribute to 
render it more active. 
The poison, in its fresh state, is a transparent, limpid 
fluid, of a greenish-yellow tint, slightly glutinous, though 
less so than the saliva, to which it has much resemblance ; 
dried, it becomes viscid, and sticks firmly to substances ; 
heated, it evaporates without inflaming ; it is diffusible in 
water, which it renders turbid and whitish when shaken 
with it. Its properties have considerable affinity to those 
of mucus; the action of reagents shew it to be neither 
acid nor alkaline ; it has no peculiar smell ; applied to 
the tongue, it produces the same sensation as grease : it 
may be taken, according to Fontana,^ internally, without 
the slightest inconvenience being excited ; but this obser- 
vation has been recently contradicted by the experiments 
of Dr HERiNG,“f- made in Surinam, on the nature of the 
venom of the Crotalus mutus. This traveller, on taking 
at different times diverse doses of this poison, mingled 
with water, felt the effects for eight days and more ; they 
manifested themselves by pains in the larynx, and other 
parts of the body, by a copious secretion of mucus from 
the nose and oesophagus, by a frequent diarrhoea, accom- 
panied by pains in the rectum, &c. ; to these were joined 
other very remarkable effects, owing to the influence which 
this poison exercised, according to Dr Hering, on the 
moral faculties. 
It follows from what we have stated, that the venom of 
snakes produces its deleterious effects only, when, intro- 
duced into a wound, it mingles with the blood: these 
morbid symptoms manifest themselves more terribly and 
^ This fact was known to the ancients, 
t See Staff, ArcMv, x. cap. 2. See Lenz, p. 460. 
