ing,
coldness, and collapse; the part bitten swells, becomes discolored, or
spotted over its surface with livid blotches, that may, ultimately,
extend to the greater portion of the body, while the poison appears to
effect a greater or less disorganization of the blood, not by
coagulating its fibrine as Fontana surmised, but in dissolving,
attenuating, and altering the form of its corpuscles, whose integrity
is so essential to life, causing them to adhere to one another, and to
the walls of the vessels by which they are conveyed; being no longer
able to traverse the capillaries, oedema is produced, followed by the
peculiar livid blush. Shakespeare would appear to have had intuitive
perception of the nature of such subtle poison, when he caused the
ghost to describe to Hamlet

"The leprous distillment whose effect
Bears such an enmity to the blood of man
That swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body
And with sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine
And a most instant tetter marked about
Most lazar like, with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body."

It is not to be supposed, however, that all or even a major portion of
the blood disks require to be changed or destroyed to produce a fatal
result, since death may supervene long before such a consummation can
be realized. It is the capillary circulation that suffers chiefly,
since the very size and caliber of the heart cavities and trunk
vessels afford them comparative immunity. But of the greatly dissolved
and disorganized condition of the blood that may occur secondarily, we
have evidences in the passive haemorrhages that attack those that have
recovered from the immediate effects of serpent poisoning, following
or coincident with subsidence of swelling and induration; and, as with
scurvy, bleeding may occur from the mouth, throat, lungs, nose, and
bowels, or from ulcerated surfaces and superficial wounds, or all
together, defying all styptics and haemastatics. In a case occurring
under the care of Dr. David Brainerd in the Illinois General
Hospital,[6] blood flowed from the gums in great profusion, and on
examination was found destitute, even under the microscope, of the
faintest indications of fibrine--the principle upon which coagulation
depends. The breath, moreover, gave most sickening exhalations,
indicative of deco