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.

    39/108 (page 23)
    and the paralysed veins oi the abdomen became enforced once more with the whole, or nearly the O O whole, of the blood-mass, leaving the rest of the body anaemic as before. This interesting experiment also shows how strong a hold the snake-poison has on the nerve-cells when they are thoroughly under its influence, and how independent this paralysing action is of the blood, persisting, as it was in this case, after all the poison had been washed out of the animal. The heart in vaso-motor paresis and paralysis is weakened in the first instance by the direct action of the poison on the medulla oblongata and the intra- cardial ganglia. Its pulsations, at first retarded in frequenc}7', become accelerated soon after the intro- duction of the poison, the pulse rate increasing rapidly and the waves becoming smaller and more easily compressible in proportion to the frequency of the pulse, which generally counts from 100 to 120 and more per minute at a comparatively early stage of the poisoning process. But an equally potent cause of heart failure is its depletion by the simultaneous stagnation of the blood mass in the veins of the abdomen. Finally, to complete the mischief, we have not only anaemia of the semi-paralytic oblongata, but the scanty blood supply this important centre receives becomes also surcharged with carbonic acid. Oxyhse- maglobin disappears almost entirely from the blood under the circumstances detailed, as both pulmonary and internal respiration are greatly interfered with, the blood tending more and more towards that thin