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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    is awakened at daylight by a tiger snake having fastened on to her wrist. She pulls off the snake, alarms the neighbours, and a doctor, living only a mile away from the place, is sent for. He appears on the scene four hours afterwards, when complete coma and collapse has set in, makes two injections of gr. ^ each, which of course had no effect and the patient is allowed to die without any further effort on the part of her medical attendant. Case 2.—A boy of 10 years is admitted to a N. S. Wales hospital in a state of com- plete collapse, barely alive, having been bitten by a brown snake 22 hours before admission. Instead of a rousing injection of at least 15 minims and the same or smaller ones repeated at short intervals, he receives only 5 minims of liq. strychnia) P.B. every twenty minutes, when death was imminent, and dies 65 minutes after admission. Case 3 is also that of a boy in an hospital. He is admitted fully conscious and apparently but slightly under the influence of snake- poison, for a five minims injection is reported to have removed the symptoms. On the following day, how- ever, he became comatose, and instead of having the antidote freely administered, gets only one more injec- tion of five minims and dies in coma. Case 4 is even worse. A little girl of 3 years, bitten by a tiger snake, receives three minim injections every half-hour, and after three of them, whilst in a state of complete coma, gets convulsions. These are attributed to the strych- nine, which thereupon is withheld, the finale being death in coma.