An essay on the poison of the cobra di capello / By John Cockle.

  • Cockle, John, 1814-1901.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the poison of the cobra di capello / By John Cockle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of science, and desirous of contributing their share to the relief of suffering humanity. It is to be hoped that an impulse will now be given to a more extended range of experimental inquiry into the nature of a class of animal poisons so recondite in their nature, and instantaneous in their results, that they afford but little opportunity for that calm deliberation so necessary in most cases w'hich call forth the resources of the healing art. Here, to delay is to lose the golden moment—to hesitate, to yield the victory to the hand of Death. Before proceeding to the more immediate subject of this Essay, it may not be considered inexpedient to pre¬ mise so much of the Zoology and Special Anatomy of the Poisonous Ophidian Reptiles as may render the views hereafter to be submitted more intelligible. o The extensive geographical distribution of the serpent tribe has rendered its members, in one form or another, familiar objects to mankind of almost every nation and age. As if by the general aspect of all to give warning against the venomous properties of a few, nature has invested the whole class with characters which have ever been contemplated with dread, sometimes amount¬ ing to superstitious awe. And from these feelings of repugnance the glittering splendour and educability of some—and even the deadly Cobra affords an example of docility and sagacity under proper tuition—have scarcely redeemed them. To such outward characters there correspond, at least in the poisonous classes, dispositions calculated to con¬ firm our first emotions of horror. Cold by nature, apathetic or torpid in their ordinary state, they are aroused by irritation or want to a degree of ferocity from which there is scarcely any escape, and to the exercise of an often mortal power of aggression.