Immunisation against serpents' venom and the treatment of snake-bite with antivenene / an address delivered by Professor Fraser on Friday, March 20, 1896.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Immunisation against serpents' venom and the treatment of snake-bite with antivenene / an address delivered by Professor Fraser on Friday, March 20, 1896. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    doses of twice the minimum-lethal and upwards cannot, however, be carried down to the minimum-lethal dose. The quantity of anti- venene required to prevent death from this dose is much less than might have been anticipated when the results of experiments with larger doses are considered. Thus, it appears that while • 36 cc. of antivenene per kilogramme is required to prevent death from twice the minimum-lethal of venom, the minute quantity of the l/2500th of a cc., or nearly 1000 times less (-0004 as compared with *35 cc.), is sufficient to prevent death from a little more than the minimum- lethal dose of venom. It is apparent that this minute quantity of antivenene does not render inert the whole of the minimum-lethal dose. All that is required, in order that the minimum-lethal dose Fig. 2. should not produce death, being that only a minute portion of it should be rendered inert; for, if this dose be the actual minimum- lethal, the rendering inert of any portion of it, however minute, will prevent the remainder from causing death. In the second series, experiments with the antivenene of the horse have been completed only with one-and-a-half the minimum-lethal dose of venom. When this dose was injected into the subcutaneous tissues of one side of the body, and, immediately thei'eafter, a dose of antivenene into the subcutaneous tissues of the opposite side, it was found that antivenene in doses of 3 cc. and 3*3 cc. per kilo- gramme failed to prevent death, but that 3 • 5 cc. and 3 • 6 cc. per kilogramme were able to do so. In the third series, experiments have been made with the minimum-