tients
only, is thus confirmed by experiments specially instituted by him for
that purpose. Further proof of its correctness we have in the brilliant
results of the strychnine treatment of snakebite in Australia, which is
the outcome and practical application of this theory. In those desperate
cases more especially, reported from all parts of the colonies, in which
death was imminent, and pulse at wrists as well as respiration had
already ceased, the strychnine injections could not possibly have
effected complete recovery within a few hours if the structure of the
nerve centres had been impaired or blood changes brought about
incompatible with life.

Feoktistow's experiments, made with viper poison, fully bear out the
correctness of the writer's theory, besides proving that there is no
essential difference between the action of the viperine and colubrine
poisons. He proved conclusively that snake-poison does not destroy
protoplasm or interfere with infusorial life, that injected into the
heart of a mollusc it causes an almost immediate cessation of its
action, that hypodermic injections of it in fish produce contraction of
the pigment cells and bleaching of the integuments, followed by
asphyxial respiration, general paralysis and death. Similar results were
observed on frogs. In mammals the symptoms were: dyspnoea, asphyxia,
paresis and paralysis of the lower extremities with succeeding general
paralysis, sometimes tonic and clonic convulsions, haemorrhages from
bowels, lungs, nose and bladder, and finally complete paralysis of
respiration and of heart.

Action of Snake-Poison on Special Nerve Centres.

It must be borne in mind that the symptoms as about to be detailed are
successive only to some extent in the order presented. They commence
generally at the lower part of the spinal cord, but immediately
afterwards, if not simultaneously, are ushered in with great rapidity
from other centres, masking each other and rendering it extremely
difficult to observe and analyse them separately. They are also very
variable through the poison concentrating its action on special centres,
leaving others comparatively intact, and this not only when from
different varieties of snakes, but also from snakes of the same variety.
Another element increasing the difficulties of correct analysis are the
depressing effects of fear, inseparable in all but the strongest minds
from the consciousness of having been bitten, and so simil