381 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [November 12, 1870. 
THE USE OF AMMONIA IN SNAKE BITES. 
The following has been sent to the Tall Mall Gazette 
by a correspondent signing himself “ An American”:— 
“ While a temporary resident of one of the Southern 
states of the United States, where rattlesnakes are nu¬ 
merous, a man who had been bitten by one of these 
venomous reptiles sent for the writer to visit him. Being- 
absent at the time, my visit was delayed some twelve 
hours. I found the patient was wounded over the top 
of his shoe, just above the instep. His leg was swollen 
to an enormous extent up to the body ; and, having no 
pretensions to medical or surgical science, I sent imme¬ 
diately, a distance of twelve miles, for a medical man. 
In the meantime, as the case seemed certain to terminate 
fatally, and having read in some newspaper that am¬ 
monia was a sure antidote for snake poison, I determined 
upon an immediate experiment. Having no instruments, 
with the patient’s razor I cut the wound entirely out, 
applied to the part cotton saturated with a mixture of 
ammonia and olive oil, and renewed the application every 
thirty minutes. I also gave him ammonia, diluted with 
whisky, in large doses, every thirty minutes, and applied 
a bandage to his thigh, as tightly drawn and as close to 
the body as possible. Under this treatment, to my utter 
astonishment, the patient recovered. Lest this case may 
be regarded as exceptional, I would add another, which 
soon after came under my observation, to confirm it, in 
which a rattlesnake so perfectly grappled his fangs 
through the ball of a man’s little toe (as it projected 
through a hole in his shoe), and so firmly fastened upon 
it, that the head of the snake had to be cut off to disen¬ 
gage it. In this case also some eight hours elapsed ere 
I was called to it; and on approaching the patient such 
was his agony from the wound he begged me to 4 take 
his rifle and shoot him.’ The leg was terribly swollen 
to the knee, but on cutting out the wound (the entire 
ball of the toe) and applying the same remedies as in the 
first case, this patient also recovered. 
ON THE COMBINATIONS OF CARBONIC 
ANHYDRIDE WITH AMMONIA AND WATER. 
BY EDWARD DIVERS, M.D. 
(Continued from page 128.) 
III. Acid Ammonium Carbonate. 
History. Berthollet announced his discovery of the 
acid carbonate in 1806, in his ‘ Troisieme Suite des Re- 
cherches sur les Lois de l’Affinite,’* * and gave an excel¬ 
lent account of its properties. Dalton, Phillips, Rose, 
St. Claire Deville and others, have since then added 
materially to our knowledge of this salt. 
Preparation. —It is obtained by exposing any other 
carbonate of ammonium to the air; by treating the half¬ 
acid or the commercial carbonate with water or with 
aqueous alcohol, or by treating the normal carbonate 
Yi alcohol ; by cooling sufiiciently-concen¬ 
trated aqueous solutions of the half-acid or the commer¬ 
cial carbonate, when it crystallizes out; by treating a 
solution of any other carbonate of ammonium with car¬ 
bonic anhydride ; and by mixing together carbonic an- 
hydride ammonia and water, the first being in excess. 
A modification of the last method is to distil the acid 
car Donate at a temperature not exceeding 62° C The 
operation is a very slow one, but, if the acid carbonate is 
more rapidly converted into vapour, the process fails. 
In any case, some of the product will be impure. 
Sensible Qualities.- Acid carbonate has a cooling, saline 
dry 6 , n0t at firSt ammomacal j and has no smell when 
Form.— It occurs in the form of powder ; in crystals, 
3 ent or . 0 Palescent, obtained from water; Indin 
.crystalline semi-transparent cakes. 
Crystalline Form.— A great deal has been written on 
* Journal de Physique, lxiv. 168. 
this subject. The crystals belong to the right prismatic 
system, and exhibit the faces of the three orders of 
rhombic prisms, as well as the three pairs of faces of the 
right rectangular prism. When the crystals form in a 
solution of commercial carbonate, cooled a little below 
its point of saturation; or in a not too-concentrated so¬ 
lution, prepared by pouring hot water over the carbonate 
in a flask and then corking the flask ; or in a solution of 
commercial carbonate, moderately strong, which has been 
treated with a stream of carbonic anhydride, they are 
hard and brilliant, and have the general contour of a 
flattened ovoid. The flatness of the crystals varies ac¬ 
cording to the strength of the solution in the more basic 
carbonates of ammonium. Generally there are to be 
seen among the ovoid crystals deposited from a cooled 
saturated solution of commercial carbonate, some long, 
essentially four-sided crystals with truncated summits. 
These do not differ in composition, or otherwise in form, 
from the first-described crystals, and give way to, or else 
are transformed into, the other variety when left for a 
time in their mother-liquor. When a warm saturated 
solution of acid carbonate is made by digesting the acid 
carbonate with the water in a firmly-closed bottle, the 
crystals which form are opaque, and first appear as 
simple rhombic prisms with dihedral summits. These, 
however, rapidly thicken, and then might be described 
as octahedrons on a rectangular base. They have the 
same faces as the previously mentioned forms. They 
readily cleave into long rhombic prisms. Their opacity 
is evidently due to their having a composite structure 
and retaining mother-liquor in their interstices. When 
a very concentrated solution of the commercial carbonate 
is made in warm water in a flask, and especially when 
some effervescence is permitted to go on, and the solution 
allowed to cool, crystals, very different in appearance 
from those already described, make their appearance. 
They generally form at the surface of the solution, and 
remain hanging vertically; and present a remarkable 
appearance from being closely packed together, and all 
extending down into the solution to an equal depth, with 
their lower edges parallel to the surface of the solution. 
In other cases these crystals form at the bottom of the 
vessel, and this generally happens when the crystals are 
prepared by taking a solution of commercial carbonate 
which has already yielded a good crop of crystals, and 
dissolving in it, by the aid of heat, as much, or nearly as 
much, fresh commercial carbonate as possible. When 
the crystals form at the bottom of the vessel, some rest 
on their broad sides, but most of them stand up, closelv 
packed in groups, nearly parallelly arranged, with then- 
angles, not their edges, projecting upwards. They have 
not the transparency and brilliancy of the ovoid crystals, 
but this is evidently due to the peculiar character of then- 
faces, and not to the existence of any interstices in them. 
They have the form of thin, rectangular, and nearly 
equilateral plates, with or without the corners slightly 
cut off, with their broad faces crinkled and with bevelled 
edges. The faces forming the edges and truncated cor¬ 
ners of the. plates, are those of the different orders of 
rhombic prisms apparent in the previously-described 
crystals. The broad faces of the plates are not at all 
like true crystalline faces. They are not only crinkled 
or waved, but are not always in their general bearings 
parallel to each other and to the normal macro-pinacoids 
of the rectangular prism, the places of which they oc¬ 
cupy- Bose has described crystals, also right rhombic 
prisms, which have different angular measurements, 
identical with those of the corresponding potassium-salt. 
These, however, he only succeeded in obtaining once. 
Deville at one time thought that he had seen oblique 
rhombic .prisms of acid carbonate produced by the de¬ 
composition of the half-acid carbonate, but he has since 
come to the conclusion that only one form of acid car¬ 
bonate exists. The cakes of acid carbonate produced by 
its own slow distillation, exactly resemble well-crystal¬ 
lized specimens of the commez-cial carbonate. 
