uch
probably as by slight variations in its chemical composition. Accepting
the "why" of these phenomena like that of many other ones, simply as a
fact not to be accounted for at present, we must be content to know
"how" they are effected, and, what is of more immediate and paramount
importance to know, that we now have an antidote that will deal
successfully with them all, that the convulsions and haemorrhages of the
Indian viper-poison and the asphyxia of that of the cobra will yield as
readily to strychnine, when properly and boldly applied, as the coma and
general paralysis following the bite of the deadly tiger snake.

[Illustration]

THE ANTIDOTE.

The theory of the action of snake-poison as that of a specific
nerve-poison, depressing and more or less suspending the function of the
motor nerve-centres throughout the body, has in the foregoing pages
received a double proof of its correctness.

In the first place, all the symptoms the snake-poison produces have been
passed in review, and shown to be fully explainable by this theory. On
this ground alone it may be claimed to have been fully established; for
it is an axiom in science that a theory on any subject must be accepted
as correct, if it accounts satisfactorily for all the phenomena
observable in connection with that subject by showing them to result
from the operation of one law. The second inductive proof of the
correctness of the writer's theory has been rendered by the experiments
of Feoktistow on animals.

Science, however, demands that a theory thus established inductively
must also stand the test of practical application or deduction. It says
in the present case:--"Granting your theory to be correct, it is but a
theory, which, however valuable it may be as a contribution to science,
is of little value to mankind if you cannot apply it practically. If
snake-poison merely acts as a depressant on motor nerve-cells without
interfering with their structure, you must be able to counteract it by
administering some drug or substance which acts as a powerful stimulant
on these cells, if such a substance can be found."

It is another illustration of that wise adaptation of means to ends
which, throughout the domain of nature, denotes the presence and rule of
a Supreme Intelligence, that this substance has been provided for us by
nature, though we have been long in finding it. Its discovery in
strychnine, and its successful application as the long