er some other treatment
or no treatment at all; but in none of them would recovery have been so
rapid and complete. The two poisons are thrown out together, and no
ill-effects of either are experienced beyond a certain degree of
weakness, which passes off quickly. This is a boon to be appreciated
fully by those only who have gone through the slow, lingering, and
painful process of convalescence from snakebite as formerly treated,
with its deadly languor and weariness, making life itself a burden and
all physical and mental exertion impossible.

CASE 1.--A. H., 15 years old, a farm labourer, was bitten on the
right index finger whilst feeling for a rabbit in a burrow. Did
not see the snake nor suspect snakebite, but collapsed helplessly
in a few minutes after returning to his work. The writer saw him
three hours after the accident. He was then completely paralysed
and in deep coma; pupils widely dilated and not reacting to light;
sense of sight and hearing dead; heart action extremely feeble;
pulse small, thread-like, and scarcely countable; respiration
quick and shallow; skin blanched and very cold. Seeing him dragged
along the road between two men, had him quickly carried to the
next house, and injected 20 minims of liq. strychnine. Only a
groan or two and a slight improvement in the pulse, indicating a
change in his condition, gave him a second injection about twenty
minutes after the first one. A change for the better then became
rapidly conspicuous. The pulse gained in strength from minute to
minute, respiration became deeper, and the coma was visibly
reduced to mere sleep, from which there was no difficulty in
rousing him to full consciousness by a vigorous shake of the
shoulders. This marvellous change was brought about within forty
minutes; and this being the first case to which the writer had
applied his theory by injecting strychnine, its unparalleled
success exceeded his most sanguine expectations, but unfortunately
also lulled him into a false sense of security, which proved
disastrous to his patient. Not knowing then as he does now that
the snake-poison after having been subdued by the antidote is not
thrown out of the system as quickly as the strychnine, and is
therefore apt to re-assert itself, he allowed another urgent
engagement to take him away from the lad after watching him for
two hour