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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    dark condition which it presents after death, and which has been taken as prima facie evidence of the direct blood-poisoning action of snake virus by one and all of previous investigators. That under the powerful combination of causes, each of which 'is in itself sufficient to endanger life, and greatly intensified as paresis gradually deepens into paralysis, the heart, even of large animals, suc- cumbs in a comparatively short time, may be readily understood. The blood-pressure, under the circumstances just detailed, must necessarily be nil. Observations by means of the sphygmograph at the bedside of a person suffering from snake-poison are scarcely feasible, except, perhaps, in a hospital, and thus far are not on record. We must, therefore, once more fall back on Feoktistow’s experiments, which show that even the smallest doses (0’02 to 0‘04 mllgr.) of the dried poison per kilo injected into the vein of a cat caused a fall in the blood-pressure almost immediately, without influencing either pulse or respiration, but that two to four mgr. were sufficient to reduce the blood-pressure to zero and bring on collapse, infusions of blood only raising it temporarily. Of drugs raising the blood- pressure he found ammonia the most effective, but only after slight doses of the poison ; after lethal ones it had no effect whatever on the blood pressure but greatly increased the haemorrhagic process in all internal organs. This important observation should