If, as I have suggested, artificial respiration could maintain vitality long enough to admit of the elimination of the poison from the system, then there may be hope that in this measure the means of preserving life may be found. This is a subject that requires further investigation and experiment, and I hope ere long to be in a position to make further inquiry into it. I shall feel greatly obliged if you will, meanwhile, call the attention of the profession in India to my suggestion. London, lsf August, 1872.

TREATMENT OF SNAKE-POISONING BY ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION.

M

By

J. Father.

M.D., C.S.T.,

Surgeon-Major, Bengal

Medical Service,

Since my return to England I have had the opportunity of making some further observations on the action of cobra-

poison,

which I shall feel

obliged by

your

noticing

in

an

early

number of the Medical Gazette. The experiments were made

by myself and Dr. Lauder cobra-poison that I had sent to England from Calcutta nearly a year ago for analysis. The animals experimented on were guinea pigs and a large and powerful fowl. A drop of the poison diluted with a quantity of water was injected into the jugular vein of a guinea pig, causing almost instant death. After death the heart was firmly contracted, and ceased to beat very rapidly. The irritability of the spinal cord, however, continued for several minutes. The lungs were ecchymosed. The blood coagulated firmly. A second guinea pig had a similar quantity of the poison injected hypodermically into the thigh, and died in a few minutes with the usual symptoms. After death, the electric points introduced into the spinal cord showed that its irritability continued for many minutes, the limbs contracting under Brunton with

its stimulus. The heart also continued to beat for minutes, and the blood coagulated firmly after death. In the third

many

experiment?the most interesting?a large, poisoned by injection of a couple of drops diluted with water, into the thigh ; it evinced the usual indications of poisoning, fell over with its beak resting on the ground, and went into convulsions,?the comb and wattles becoming quite livid. At this stage the trachea was opened, a tube introduced, and artificial respiration commenced ; as the blood became aerated, the lividity of the comb and wattle3 gave place to a bright florid tinge, and the convulsions ceased. On ceasing to inflate the lungs, the comb and wattles became livid again, and the convulsions recurred. This was repeated many times, always with the same result, until the artificial respiration was stopped, when convulsions due to non-aerated blood (asphyxia) closed the bird's existence. This seems to indicate the possibility of life being preserved, if respiration could be kept up long enough to allow of the elimination of the poison by natural, aided by artificial, means. Whether the injury done to the nerve-centres by the presence of the poison be of such a nature as to be irremediable, I cannot say (in severe bites I should fear it is) ; but evidently from this experiment; which I hope to repeat, benefit may be hoped for from artificial respiration ; and I beg of you to notice this, that those who have the opportunity in India may repeat the experiment and test its efficacy further. I have requested my friend, Mr. Richards, of Balasore, who has already done so much in the investigation of snake-poisoning, to try the experiment, and I hope he will report the result. It is, I think, clear from these experiments that vitality is exhausted by paralysis of the nerve-centres in the enceplialon and medulla oblongata, that the spinal cord is not affected in (he same degree, and that the heart's action is not, in ordinary cases, paralysed. vigorous fowl of the poison,

was