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.
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![bile—we must admit that the spleen is in some intimate manner connected with the healthy elaboration of the blood. The following quotation from the Treatise on the Spleen by this very distinguished microscopist and histologist, bears immediately on the subject matter in question:— u It is known that the enlargements of the Spleen which constitute the most serious diseases of that organ, have a special coincidence with complaints, in which either a dissolution, or some other abnormal condition of the blood is present. “ This is the case in typhus, typhoid cholera, putrid exanthemata, erysipelas, scarlatina, measles, dyscrasia of drunkards, ague, scurvy, purpura, chlorosis, acute rheumatism, tuberculosis. In these blood diseases the texture is much altered, the size of the Spleen often amazingly increased so that it possesses a volume of 1 to 300 cubic inches and a weight of 10 to 20 lbs.” Having thus attempted, and we trust not in vain, to shew that the Serpent-poison influences the economy by producing a true blood Sepsis, we are naturally led to speculate upon the manner in which this fatal alteration of the blood ensues. The entire subject of the modus operandi of Septic agents upon the constitution of the blood is still in- volved in the greatest obscurity; it is a riddle which has been yet but partly guessed. Our present amount of knowledge upon the subject perhaps warrants the belief that these agents may exercise both a vital and chemical action. If we may attach importance to the investigations of Schultz [“ Natur: System der Allgemein : Pharmako- logie”] it appears certain that the blood discs can, by en-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28041641_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
