Snake Poison

Abstract

EVERY now and again the British public is horrified by accounts of the famines which periodically carry off myriads of our fellow-subjects in India, but comparatively few have the least idea of the enormous destruction of human life which occurs there from the ravages of wild animals and venomous snakes. In a most interesting lecture recently delivered at a meeting of the Society of Arts by Sir Joseph Fayrer, the lecturer estimated the loss of life at no less than 20,000 human beings and 50,000 head of cattle annually. Wild animals destroy most of the cattle, but venomous snakes kill more human beings than all the wild animals put together. The bites of these reptiles caused the death of 17,000 persons, and over 3,000 cattle in the year 1875, and these figures very probably understate the facts, as the returns upon which they are based are incomplete. The desirability of obtaining an antidote to snake poison is thus evident, and many attempts have been already made to discover one. Another has been added to the already numerous investigations on this subject by Mr. Pedler, who has lately published the results of his research in a paper read before the Royal Society. Before proceeding to seek for the antidote, he endeavoured to analyse the poison chemically, and thus discovered several facts of great interest The venom of snakes seems to contain very much the same proportion of solids at all times, even under such different climatic conditions as during the wet and dry seasons. It may be kept for two or three months without alteration, but if preserved for a year or eighteen months, it becomes insoluble, and, to a great extent, loses its poisonous qualities. Its composition is very like that of albumen, and, indeed, the dried poison, which looks very like gum arabic, contains about sixty per cent, of albumen, and only forty per cent, at most of the poisonous principle. By the use of solvents, Mr. Pedler endeavoured to separate a crystalline principle, such as Lucien Bonaparte affirmed to be present in the poison of the rattlesnake. His attempts were unsuccessful, and he therefore tried to obtain it by dialysing the poison through parchment paper. Part of the poison dialysed, and part did not. On evaporating the fluid inside the dialyser, the residue formed a gummy mass, with a poisonous action. The water outside the dialyser also gave a similar result, but in it a few crystals could be detected. It was, if anything, rather more poisonous than the ordinary virus. He did not succeed, however, in obtaining any very definite crystalline substance. Ammonia, which has lately been highly recommended as an antidote in snake poisoning, he found, as did Fontana two hundred years ago, to be useless, and indeed its addition to the poison before injection seemed really to hasten death.