INDIAN SNAKE POISONS,
respiration has been performed for some time, it is not unusual for blood to be present in the urine; but if the kidneys be examined in these cases the wonder will be, not that blood was found in the urine, but that any urine was secreted at all to mix with the blood, so great is the renal congestion. This circumstance, therefore, can hardly be taken as evidence of blood change.
In spite, then, of occasional discharges of blood from mucous surfaces, and that the blood of man is generally found fluid after death, if we take into consideration the facts that death, except from nerve symptoms, is unrecorded ; that after the subject has recovered from the nerve effects, he at once regains his usual health, sequelae being unknown, at least if we trust the available evidence — always excepting the local results of cobra-bite which are most severe; and that in the vast majority of cases there is no symptom of serious blood-poisoning even during the occurrence of the nerve symptoms; also that the kidneys give no evidence of altered relation to the blood; and that, as a rule, the coagulability of the blood is not destroyed in animals: we may conclude that though cobra-venom is a nerve poison of surpassing deadliness, as a blood poison it is not an agent of much power.
