Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An essay on the poison of the cobra di capello / by John Cockle. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
19/24
![all poisons supplied by the animal kingdom occa- sion death by destroying the irritability of the muscular fibres, and disposing both solids and fluids to a sudden corruption. The same may be said of those vegetable poisons that are no sooner in- troduced into the blood than they are succeeded by death.”—[“ On Poisons.*’ Vol. I., page 106.] This opinion we unhesitatingly adopt, though conceiving a third mode possible ; the simultaneous affection of the two systems. But before proceeding to indicate those special changes which in the Serpent poison would ap- pear conclusively to demonstrate blood poisoning, it may be more instructive to direct attention to the characters which denote decomposition of the blood from various causes; we therefore extract the following account of its decomposition from Bock [u Lehrbuch der Pathologishen Anatomie”] :— u The dissolution, sepsis, putrid decomposition of the blood, is characterised in general, according to Engel, by its great liquidity and permeability without coagulation, with dirty brown colour and more decided disposition to putrefaction and to co- pious haemorrhagic or albuminous exudations, soon undergoing putrefactive change. This sepsis may be protopathic, from speedily accruing disturbance of the nervous system, or through the reception of putrefac- tive matter. Miasms are other poisons introduced into the blood, or may be consequent upon other phases (Hyperinos or Hypinosis). According to Engel, aug- mented volume exists in acutely occurring dissolution, and this occurs particularly after albuminosis, irregular typhus, scurvy, and pyaemia. The chronic form is attended with diminished volume of the blood, and to such a condition appertain all scorbutic conditions](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28041641_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
