INDIAN SNAKE POISONS,
acute effusion thnt scarcely differs from blood, to a slight hyperæmia attended with a pale serous-like effusion.
From these considerations it appears evident that the local effect of cobra-poison is simply severe and acute inflammation, to which the pain attending cobra-bite is due, with a more than ordinary tendency to effusion from the blood-vessels. Corroborative testimony to what is here advanced must be present to the mind of everyone who has had much to do in the manipulation of cobra-poison. A very frequent, but involuntary, experiment is to get some of the poison into the eye. Should the circumstance not be at once noticed, so as to permit the eye being washed out immediately, after a very short time a smarting pain is felt in it ; and if it is examined it will be found red and watering, the vessels becoming rapidly enlarged, and, in fact, an acute attack of conjunctivitis with chemosis is set up, which may last for days.
The subject has been specially dwelt on here, as on it can be founded an easy method of deciding whether a person has really been poisoned by a snake. One of the most difficult subjects in connection with snake-bite is to know for certain whether the patient has really been poisoned by a snake or not, for it is clear that unless the venomous snake really injects his poison into the victim there is no danger. Now, the mark of the teeth is no guide, or next to none, because a cobra may not leave a single mark visible to the naked eye;
