INDIAN SNAKE POISONS,
various poisonous snakes, in order to detect any differences in their effects, paying special attention to those conditions on which the fatal results are dependent, and any prominent signs that will enahle us, with certainty, to say if, in a given case, we have really to deal with the results of snake-bite, or not.
As the cobra (Naja Tripudians) is at the same time the commonest and the most deadly of all Indian poisonous snakes, it will be best first to consider the symptoms produced by it, and the ways in which its poison may be fatal. To do this it will be necessary to detail a sufficient number of experiments to bring into prominence all the characteristic symptoms of cobra poisoning, and from them to deduce the direct causes of death. We shall then have a standard by which we shall be able to contrast the effects of the poisons of the other species of venomous snakes.
To begin with the symptoms as they occur in human beings; the following is an account, by Dr. Hilson, of a case that came under his own observation : —
"On a night in June, at about half-past 12 o'clock, Dabee, a Hindu punkah coolie, was bitten on the shoulder by a cobra, whilst sleeping. On inspecting the wound, there were found over the prominence of the right deltoid muscle, and about three quarters of an inch apart, two large drops of a clear serous-like fluid tinged with blood, which had apparently oozed from two small punctures, so minute that they could not be
