EXPERIMENTS ON THE INFLUENCE OF SNAKE-POISON. 
151 
animal looks scared and is twitching. This Guinea-pig is very 
active. 2.30.—Another dose injected. The animal is twitch¬ 
ing much. It jumped out of the deep box in which it had 
been placed for observation. Breathing is hurried. 2.36.—It 
seems better. Another dose injected into the thigh. 2.45.— 
Not much effect. Another dose injected. 2.46.—Twitching 
continues; animal remains active. It recovered. 
Means of Preventing the Effects of the Poison. 
There are three ways in which the toxic effects of a poison 
may be entirely prevented or greatly diminished. These are—- 
1st, by preventing its admission into the blood; 2nd, by 
counteracting the effects it produces while it is circulating in 
the body and sustaining life by artificial respiration ; 3rd, by 
quickening its elimination. The first of these methods is the 
only one which has hitherto been of any great service in cases 
of poisoning by the bite of Cobras. Various attempts have 
been made to counteract the effects of Cobra poison by means 
of antidotes ; but the advantage derived from their use is still, 
to say the least, doubtful. No special attempts, so far as we 
know, have been made to hasten the elimination of the poison, 
or at least none have been made avowedly for this purpose, 
though it is possible that some of the antidotes may have had 
that effect. This part of the subject we will treat in a future 
paper. 
“The subject of prevention of entry of the virus by ligature 
or other mechanical measures has been fully discussed in the 
“ Thanatophidia it is unnecessary to recur to it here, for the 
present at all events. 
“ For the purpose of attempting to counteract the effects of 
the Cobra poison while it is circulating in the blood, it is 
necessary to have some idea of its mode of action. 
Mode of Action of the Poison. 
“ Snake-poison probably produces its fatal or deleterious effects 
either by completely paralysing the nerve-centres or other 
portion of the nervous apparatus, and thus causing arrest of 
respiration, or by partially paralysing them and also poisoning 
the blood, thereby inducing pathological conditions of a 
secondary nature, which may, according to circumstances, 
cause the slightest or the most dangerous synrptoms. 
“ The effect produced depends on two sets of conditions :— 
first, the species of the snake, its actual state at the time, the 
quantity and quality of its poison, and the circumstances 
under which it inflicts the bite; second, the species, size, and 
vigour of the living creature, and the circumstances under 
which it is bitten. 
“ Snake-poison is essentially a neurotic, and, when it takes full 
effect, it appears to kill by annihilating, in some unknown way, 
the source or distribution of nerve-force. It is also an irritant; 
for if applied to a mucous membrane or to the conjunctiva, it 
soon induces violent inflammation; absorption at the same time 
takes place, and symptoms of poisoning are produced. It is 
also, to a certain extent, a septic; for if the bitten creature 
survive, the wound and the parts about it are apt to slough and 
to induce septicaemia. The poison acts by absorption—that is, 
by entering the circulation, and so reaching the nerve-centres, 
it produces, according to the quantity or intensity of the 
venom, either death or severe local and constitutional symptoms. 
If it find entry by a large vein, such as the femoral or jugular, 
life may be destroyed in a few seconds. 
“ The blood itself is affected by the poison. 
Dr. Fayrer has not been able to detect any corpuscular 
changes, nor has he any exact information on the chemical 
changes it undergoes, or may have undergone; but that it is 
altered there can be little doubt; and in poisoning of the lower 
animals, at all events by the Yiperidse, its coagulability after 
death is generally destroyed, whilst after death by poisoning by 
the colubrine snakes, the blood generally coagulates.* 
As the blood is the channel through which the poison acts, 
it is obvious that the first object should be to arrest, destroy, 
or prevent its entry into the circulation; or if it has already 
entered, to neutralize or counteract its action, or to procure its 
elimination by the agency of the natural depurating organs 
and their secretions, and to treat local, consecutive, and con¬ 
stitutional symptoms by such remedial measures as may be 
required by the patient’s condition. 
“ Absorption takes place with extreme rapidity, so fast, indeed, 
that it was formerly supposed, in the case of some of the more 
active poisons, that they acted by transmission of a shock 
through the nervous system; and, so far as we know at present, 
it is not improbable that such, in some instances, may be the 
case. But rapid as the effect of snake-bite sometimes is, there 
is no reason to believe that generally it operates on the 
nerve-centres through any other channel than that of the 
vascular system. The experiments of Blake, Hering, and, 
later, of Claude Bernard show that absorption takes place 
with such rapidity as to explain the most rapid deaths from 
such cause. 
“We have neither seen nor heard of any case of snake¬ 
poisoning, in man or the lower animals, so rapid (though in 
some Dr. Fayrer has observed the first symptoms in a few 
seconds) as to justify the conclusion that poisoning had occurred 
otherwise than through the medium of the circulation. 
“ Some preliminary experiments made in England by one of 
us (Dr. Brunton) with the poison before it had undergone 
decomposition, seemed to show that it produced paralysis of the 
spinal cold, of the ends of the motor nerves, and of the muscles 
themselves. The experiments which we made together with 
the same jioison a few months afterwards, as well as with other 
samples of poison sent from India, have not given concordant 
results. We therefore propose to postpone the consideration of 
this subject to a future paper, and to confine ourselves at 
present to the mode in which death is produced by the poison, 
especially in mammals. 
Somatic death, according to Bichat, may commence in the 
brain, lungs, or heart; but the experiments of Fontana and 
Legallois show that so long as circulation and respiration are 
kept up, the body remains alive, although the head be absent. 
The brain is only necessary to life inasmuch as the respiratory 
movements cease when it is removed or destroyed, either 
mechanically or by the action of a poison upon it. The causes 
of somatic death are thus limited to failure of the circulation 
and failure of the respiration. 
“ The lori g continuance of the cardiac pulsations after apparent 
death (Experiments 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10,) excludes failure of the 
ciiculation as the usual cause of death; and we are thus 
brought by exclusion to regard death caused by the bite of a 
Cobra, or by its poison introduced into the body in any other 
way, as death from failure of the respiration, or, in other words, 
death by asphyxia. The truth of this view is well illustrated 
by the following experiments,! which show that the vitality of 
the heart may be retained for a considerable time if the respi¬ 
ration is kept up. It shows also that the convulsions which 
have been remarked by Russell and all subsequent observers as 
almost always preceding death are not due so much to the 
action of the poison itself on the nervous centres, as that they 
depend on the irritation which is produced in them by the 
venosity of the blood.” 
* Our experiments in England have not confirmed these observations made in 
India. The blood of animals dead from Daboia poisoning has been found to 
coagulate. This is a point that needs much further and repeated observation, as 
indeed, does the question of the chemistry of the blood of animals affected by 
snake-poison, and we hope to report further on it.” 
t “ Excepting those cases in which the poison is injected into a large vein, such 
as the jugular, and causes sudden arrest of the heart’s action.” 
