and vainly sought
antidote to snake-poison, are glorious triumphs of scientific deduction.

Strychnine is the exact antithesis to snake-poison in its action. Under
its influence every motor nerve-cell throughout the system sends forth
stronger currents of nerve force than it does in its normal state. These
currents run alike from cell to cell, and from cell to peripheral fibre,
and act by means of the latter on all contractile, and especially all
muscular tissue, causing contractions, which, after poisonous doses of
the drug, assume the form of tetanic convulsions, provoked by the
slightest touch or even noise in consequence of highly intensified
reflex action.

Whilst, then, snake-poison, as we have seen, turns off the
motor-batteries and reduces the volume and force of motor-nerve
currents, strychnine, when following it as an antidote, turns them on
again, acting with the unerring certainty of a chemical test, _if
administered in sufficient quantity_. Purely physiological in its
action, it neutralises the effects of the snake-poison, and announces,
by unmistakable symptoms, when it has accomplished this task, and would,
if continued, become a poison itself. Previous to this announcement its
poisonous action is completely neutralised by the snake-poison, and the
latter would therefore be equally as efficacious in strychnine-poisoning
as strychnine is in snake-poisoning. Strychnine, in short, is the
antidote _par excellence_ of snake-poison, and cannot be surpassed by
any other substance known to us.

With the symptoms following the introduction of the subtle ophidian
virus into the human and animal system so markedly pointing to
strychnine as the antidote, it appears a matter of surprise that it was
not used as such before and that it was left to the writer to discover
the antagonism between the two poisons. Misleading experiments with the
drug on animals erroneously considered to be final in their results,
together with confused and contradictory notions about the action of
snake-poison, were the chief factors, already pointed out, that caused
research on this important subject to remain for centuries so barren of
results, and made even able investigators with more correct views than
the rest, postpone the discovery of a physiological antidote to a more
advanced state of science, when all the time it was lying ready at their
hands.

It is self-evident from preceding statements, that in the treatment of
snakebite