EXPERIMENTS WITH SNAKE VENOM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5698, 17 October 1896, Page 7

EXPERIMENTS WITH SNAKE VENOM.

The thousands of deaths from snakebite which annually occur in India and in all tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world have induced many investigators to seek a means of protection against serpents' venom. Experiments carried out by Professor Fraser, of Edinburgh, have been briefly mentioned from time to time in the daily Press, but a full account of his work has only lately been communicated to the scientific world. Headers of Dumas will remember that the Count of Monte Cristo made himself poison-proof by taking increasing doses of various virulent substances. Professor Fraser, by following similar methods and using the dried venom of serpents, found that horses, cats, rabbits, and other animals secured protection against the venom by the administration of successive gradually increasing doses. The blood-serum of such immunised animals is endowed with similar protective qualities if introduced into the system of a healthy animal at the same time as serpents' venom or shortly afterwards. And this immunity is not merely produced by the subcutaneous injection of antivenene, as Professor Fraser calls his antidotal serum, but also by stomach administration, the results exceeding the most sanguine anticipations. Snake-charmers have often been said to protect themselves against the bites of serpents by swallowing venom or dried poison-glands, and experiments done by Professor Fraser go to affirm that statement. . Cobra venom was administered to cats and rats up to doses of one thousand time 3 the amount which would have been fatal to those animals if injected under the skin, and yet no symptoms of poisoning were produced. Furthermore, the animals which had swallowed the venom were made proof against the bites of cobras. The curious result was also found that the milk of a cat thus protected conferred the same immunity upon a family of kittens, which fact supplies a scientific foundation for the half - admitted conviction expressed by Oliver Wendell Holmes with reference to his heroine, Elsie Venner. Professor Fraser's valuable observations refer mainly to the lower animals, but they have a direct bearing upon the treatment of snakepoisoning in man, and are therefore of the utmost value. — Graphic.