Snake venoms : their physiological action and antidote / by George Lamb.

  • Lamb, George, 1869-1911.
Date:
[1903]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Snake venoms : their physiological action and antidote / by George Lamb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    6/28 (page 2)
    have to remember that I am dealing with a subject which is full of what I might call technicalities, a subject possessed of a language peculiar in a way to itself, known only to the workers on the subject, and of which the medical man in general has little or no cognisance. In the third place, investigators have by no means arrived at any absolutely definite conclusions as to the exact methods by which the various snake poisons cause their lethal actions; that they do differ in this respect there can, however, be no possible doubt. It is, therefore, you will readily imagine, a subject around which controversy still runs high. Every day new facts are being brought to light, new hypotheses are being expounded, and old theories exploded. Finally, I have also to remember that to some of }*ou at least the subject is a new one, that it may be the extent of your knowledge is limited to appreciat- ing that there are some snakes which secrete a poisonous saliva, while there are others which have not this function. I have, therefore, to crave your indulgence, especially so as, for the few weeks I have been in this country, my time has been so fully occupied as to prevent me from making any written preparations for this paper. It is not my intention to enter into the question of the differences by which naturalists know a poisonous from a non-poisonous snake. In fact, I am not competent to do so. I propose to confine my remarks to a short description of the physiological action of the different venoms with which 1 have worked, and also to say something about the antidotes to these poisons. There are many poisonous snakes in India. Of these, how- ever, only four or five varieties can be said to offer any danger to man. Naturalists divide these into two groups, viz., (1) colubrine and (2) viperine. In the colubrine group of poison- ous snakes, we have (1) the cobra, (2) the king cobra, (3) the krait family, of which there are at least four varieties, the best known being the bungarus coeruleus and the bungarus fasciatus. In the viperine group of poisonous snakes danger- ous to man, we have (1) daboia Russellii or chain viper, and (2) echis carinata or phorrsa. At the outset, however, I should like you to understand that my remarks will be, for the most part, confined to a summary of the observations which I have made with the poisons of the two most deadly of these snakes, viz., the cobra and the daboia. I shall also have a few words to say about the venom of one of the krait family, viz., bungarus fasciatus; but my experiments with this poison are by no means complete. I have little or no experience of the poison of the king cobra,