the waves becoming smaller and
more easily compressible in proportion to the frequency of the pulse,
which generally counts from 100 to 120 and more per minute at a
comparatively early stage of the poisoning process. But an equally
potent cause of heart failure is its depletion by the simultaneous
stagnation of the blood mass in the veins of the abdomen. Finally, to
complete the mischief, we have not only anaemia of the semi-paralytic
oblongata, but the scanty blood supply this important centre receives
becomes also surcharged with carbonic acid. Oxyhaemaglobin disappears
almost entirely from the blood under the circumstances detailed, as both
pulmonary and internal respiration are greatly interfered with, the
blood tending more and more towards that thin dark condition which it
presents after death, and which has been taken as _prima facie_ evidence
of the direct blood-poisoning action of snake virus by one and all of
previous investigators.

That under the powerful combination of causes, each of which is in
itself sufficient to endanger life, and greatly intensified as paresis
gradually deepens into paralysis, the heart, even of large animals,
succumbs in a comparatively short time, may be readily understood.

The _blood-pressure_, under the circumstances just detailed, must
necessarily be _nil_. Observations by means of the sphygmograph at the
bedside of a person suffering from snake-poison are scarcely feasible,
except, perhaps, in a hospital, and thus far are not on record. We must,
therefore, once more fall back on Feoktistow's experiments, which show
that even the smallest doses (0.02 to 0.04 mllgr.) of the dried poison
_per kilo_ injected into the vein of a cat caused a fall in the
blood-pressure almost immediately, without influencing either pulse or
respiration, but that two to four mgr. were sufficient to reduce the
blood-pressure to zero and bring on collapse, infusions of blood only
raising it temporarily. Of drugs raising the blood-pressure he found
ammonia the most effective, but only after slight doses of the poison;
after lethal ones it had no effect whatever on the blood pressure but
greatly increased the haemorrhagic process in all internal organs. This
important observation should be kept in mind by those who inject
ammonia in serious snakebite cases, and it probably applies likewise to
_the excessive use of alcohol_.

This leads the writer on to the discussion of this singular haemorrhagic
proces