ON THE SO-CALLED “ INACTIVE ” CONDITION OF SOLIDS. 
123 
The minuteness of detail with which every one of the forty-six sections are 
treated is remarkable ; nothing short of a complete exhaustion of the subject 
seems to satisfy this decidedly original thinker and experimenter. 
(7b be continued .) 
CAUSE OF DEATH FROM SNAKE-BITES. 
TO THE EDITORS OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Gentlemen,—Professor G. B. Halford, M.D., of the Melbourne University, 
has been investigating the cause of death from snake-bites, especially that of 
the cobra de capello, and although his investigations might be considered more 
within the province of the physiologist than of the pharmaceutist, I think a 
few extracts from them might be highly interesting to the latter. 
The Professor directs his attention to the state of the blood after death, and 
in all cases finds it dark, very fluid, and without any tendency to coagulate ou 
exposure. He finds it to contain a large number of foreign cells, which, when 
highly magnified under the microscope, are seen to contain nuclei. His own 
words will probably best describe them. 
“ When a person is mortally bitten by the cobra de capello, molecules of 
living ‘ germinal ’ matter are thrown into the blood and speedily grow into cells, 
and as rapidly multiply, so that in a few hours millions upon millions are pro¬ 
duced at the expense, as far as I can at present see, of the oxygen absorbed 
into the blood during inspiration ; hence the gradual decrease and ultimate 
extinction of combustion and chemical change in every other part of the body, 
followed by coldness, sleepiness, insensibility, slow breathing, and death. 
“ The cells which thus render, in so short a time, the blood unfit to support 
life, are circular, with a diameter on the average of one seventeen-hundredth 
of an inch. They contain a nearly round nucleus of one two-thousand-eight- 
hundredth of an inch in breadth, which, when further magnified, is seen to 
contain other more minute spherules of living 1 germinal ’ matter. In addition 
to this, the application of magenta reveals a minute coloured spot at some part 
of the circumference of the cell. This, besides its size, distinguishes it from the 
white pus, or lymph corpuscle. 
u Thus, then, it would seem that as the vegetable cell requires for its growth 
inorganic food and the liberation of oxygen, so the animal cell requires for its 
growth organic food and the absorption of oxygen. Its food is present in the 
blood, and it meets it in the lungs ; thus, the whole blood becomes disorganized, 
and nothing is found after death but dark fluid blood,—its fluidity indicating the 
loss of fibrine, the dark colour its want of oxygen, which it readily absorbs 
after death.” 
The Professor considers this a probable clue to the further study of zymotic 
diseases and of cholera especially, the effects bearing strong comparison. 
Faithfully yours, 
Charles Symes. 
Birkenhead , August 20th , 1867. 
ON THE SO-CALLED “INACTIVE” CONDITION OF SOLIDS. 
By Charles Tomlinson, F.R.S. 
In the June number of the { Philosophical Magazine/ p. 479, is a translation from the 
‘Comptes Rendus’ for November 19, 1866, of an interesting paper by M. Gernez, “On 
