Report on the effects of artificial respiration, intravenous injection of ammonia, and administration of various drugs, &c. in Indian and Australian snake-poisoning, and the physiological, chemical, and microscopical nature of snake-poisons / by the commission appointed to investigate the subject.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the effects of artificial respiration, intravenous injection of ammonia, and administration of various drugs, &c. in Indian and Australian snake-poisoning, and the physiological, chemical, and microscopical nature of snake-poisons / by the commission appointed to investigate the subject. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    33/180 (page 27)
    35 There can, we think, be little doubt that in many of these cases the poisoning was very slight indeed, and that the symptoms alleged to be due to snake-poisoning were greatly attributable to brandy or other alcoholic stimulants Snd fear. Here, says Dr. Halford, nearly all cases (of snake-bite) are soon seen by medical men, and they become a source of fearful anxiety on the part of everybody the symptoms and the results of treatment being carefully noted. (Medical Times and Gazette, 10th January, 1874, p. 53.) lo these undoubted sources of fallacy, excepting in the two fatal cases, and others in which there is no evidence ot snake-poisoning at all, we find, on an analysis of his cases, that, in fourteen of the ttventy-one cases, the extreme importance, in a scientific question of this kind, of determining whether the snake-bite was inflicted by a poisonous or non- poisonous snake, does not seem to have been worthy ot serious consideration. Again, when it is borne m mmd that a large number of the bites were experienced by women, girls, and boys, whose nervous organization is delicate and easily upset by the operation of the emotions, fear, &c, it will be readily understood why we regard his cases as generally wanting in that scientific precision and accurate observation of facts which alone must be allowed to carry conviction. 36. We nowhere find in Dr. Halford's writings that he has attempted to measure the exact quantity of poison which any of the poisonous snakes of Australia is capable of shedding during one effective bite. We, therefore, conclude that he has not the slightest idea as to the quantity necessary to destroy dogs and man, and the minimum quantity which can be resisted either by dogs or man with comparative impunity. It was to determine this vitally important point, and to illustrate the fallacy which must underlie partial or ineffective bites, that we undertook the graduated series of experiments, the leading points of which are tabulated in para- graph 25, and commented upon in the two succeeding para- graphs, 26 and 27. It is there shown that the time taken to kill dogs varies strictly according to the quantity of virus inserted, either by bite or by means of a hypodermic syringe, into the areolar tissue of a dog ; that one large dog recovered after being much affected from an injection of a fourth of a grain ; that the eighth of a grain proved mortal to a sma-11 dog; that the tenth of a grain killed a small dog, but failed to kill two larger dogs; that though two out of three dogs were much affected by an injection of the twelth of a grain, they