On snake poison : its action and its antidote / by A. Mueller.

  • Mueller, A.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On snake poison : its action and its antidote / by A. Mueller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    opportunities for observation on man would supply, his resort was usually experiments on animals. A few snakes were caught, a few luckless dogs or other animals procured, and the slaughter of the innocents began. As test experiments to confirm observations on man, or made with a view of finding a correct theory of the action of snake-poison, these attempts were unobjectionable, although, without an elaborate scien- tific apparatus and in other than skilled hands, they were not likely to produce results of any value. But most of the experimenters were not content with purely theoretical aims. They were seeking to find the anti- dote by a purely empirical method, and had nothing to guide them in the choice of drugs. A dose of snake- poison was administered to an animal, and then a dose of some drug or chemical, chosen ad libitum, sent after it. Next day another presumed antidote was tried, another animal slaughtered, and so on ad nauseam, until finally the baffled antidote-searcher, not one whit the wiser for all his trouble and the useless tortures inflicted, confessed himself beaten and joined in the “ non possumus ” of his predecessors. One important point has been completely left out of sight and ignored in all this experimenting on animals. It is the fact that the action of snake-poison on the human system and on that of animals, more especially dogs, though very similar, is not absolutely identical, and that for this reason alone results of experiments on the latter cannot be indiscriminately