On the nature of snake-poison : its effects on living creatures, and the present aspect of 'treatment of the poisoned' : read at a meeting of the Medical Society of London, Monday, January, 28th, 1884 / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Fayrer, Sir Joseph, 1824-1907.
Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature of snake-poison : its effects on living creatures, and the present aspect of 'treatment of the poisoned' : read at a meeting of the Medical Society of London, Monday, January, 28th, 1884 / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the subject of poisonous snakes and the nature and effects of their venom. During that inquiry, which continued till 1871, I ascertained from official sources that out of a popu- lation of 120,972,263 (Dr. Hunter), 11,416 persons died of snake-bite in the year 1869. Subsequent returns show that the mortality continues at very much the same rate. The Sanitary Commissioner, in his report on the North- West Provinces and Oude for 1882, tells us that 6,515 per- sons were killed in that year by snakes and wild beasts, out of a population of 44,107,869. In 1881, in all India, there were 22,377 deaths from the same cause. In destructiveness the snakes stand in about the follow- ing- order : cobra, krait, echis, daboia. The ophiophagus elaps, bungarus fasciatus, and hydro- phidae are deadly but less numerous, and therefore less destructive to life. The returns cited represent only a portion of India, and there is good reason to believe that the total annual mor- tality of the whole peninsula is not much, if at all, under 20,000 persons, or roughly about one in every 10,000. The subject is of much general interest, and it is as im- portant to humanity as to science to ascertain the nature and properties of the poison, and to discover what may best counteract it. Snake-poison is secreted by glands which represent the parotids in other creatures (a small gland is connected with the duct of the poison-gland in daboia, and was figured in a drawing by me, made in 1869. Dr. Wall suggests that its secretion may in some way modify the action of the poison, perhaps giving it the peculiarity in which it differs from the cobra-venom) and is probably a modification of the saliva, though different in its action from that innocent and indispensable secretion. The analogy is more probable if, as suggested by some physiologists, Mr. Busk and others, there be an active principle in it, closely allied to the ptyaline of saliva. The virus is a transparent, slightly viscid fluid, faintly acid in reaction, of varying specific gravity, 1*058 being the average (according to Wall) of a mixture of virus taken from several cobras. It has a bitter taste in the cobra, but not bitter in daboia. It is of a faintly straw-coloured hue in cobra ; in the ophiophagus of a golden yellow. When dried it loses from 50 to 75 per cent, of water (Wall) and forms a semi-crystalline substance like gum-arabic. It is secreted in considerable quantities, and if a fresh and