Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/287

Rh useful as stimulants; but he found, by experiment, that neither liquor ammoniæ nor liquor potassæ destroys the poisonous properties of the venom, although mixed directly with it. Suction of the wound is good, but may be dangerous. Immediate cauterization of the wound, or removal of it by the knife, is indispensable.

It was found, by Dr. Gilman, that healthy, vigorous vegetables perish in a few hours on being inoculated with the venom of the rattlesnake. Others have found the same results, although Dr. Mitchell did not. Dr. Salisbury poisoned eight lilac and other bushes, the leaves of which above—not below—the point of inoculation withered in a few days. Terrible and virulent as this poison is, it undergoes decomposition in a short time, and becomes filled with forms of animal life and covered with fungi. It may, when fresh from the fang, be swallowed by the animal itself, or by man, without injury. Prof. Baird says: "I have myself (rather foolishly, I must confess) swallowed nearly the entire contents of one gland of a large rattlesnake;" but, if the animal be inoculated by its own venom, it speedily dies. Such, however, is not the case with the venom of the cobra, according to experiments made by Dr. Fayrer, who says: "I believe that it is



capable of absorption, through the mucous and serous membranes with which it is brought into contact. Placed on the conjunctiva of dogs, the symptoms of poisoning were rapidly developed." The same authority states that the cobra does not die from its own bite, or that of its kind, but that innocuous serpents are directly killed by it.

It is a singular fact that the flesh of animals killed by snake-poison may be eaten with impunity. The fowls killed by Dr. Fayrer were taken and eaten by the sweepers. But the blood of an animal killed by snake-venom is itself poisonous, and poisons the animal into which