10
Scientific Memoirs by
without detection because, until they have led to a very considerable reduction in
the total number of intact erythrocytes or to appreciable staining of the fluids with
free hæmoglobin, there is nothing specially to attract attention to their occur-
rence. But where the erythrocytes are nucleated, any processes of solution
must necessarily lead to corresponding increase in the number of free nuclei,
so that the degree to which the latter are present in any specimen must serve
as an index to the occurrence of even relatively limited processes of solution.
The effects of the solvent action of the venom on the bodies of the erythro-
cytes in specimens of birds' blood outside the body are illustrated in Figs. 6—7
and 20 of Plate I, and in Fig. 1, Plate II. Fig. 6, Plate I, and Fig. I, Plate II,
show that complete solution had taken place in two specimens of 10.5 c. c. of
fowls' blood within the course of 2½ hours subsequent to the period at which
0.01 gramme of dried cobra-venom had been added to them; Fig. 7, Plate I,
shows the condition of 10.5 c. c. twenty-four hours after mixture with 0.0005
gramme; and Fig. 20, Plate I, that of 76 c.c. of the blood of a goose twenty-four
hours after mixture with 0.002 gramme of venom.
The data embodied in, Table I clearly show that the water constituting the
vehicle for the venom in such mixtures will not account for the phenomenon,
and Figs, 2, 3 and 4 of Plate II, and Fig. 8 of Plate I that solutions of serum,
and even of viperine venom, by no means necessarily possess such high solvent
property as that of solutions of cobra-venom. Figs. 2 and 4, Plate II, show the
phenomena presented by 10.5 c. c. of fowls' blood two and a half and twenty-
four hours after the addition of 0.1 gramme of dry cobra-serum ; Fig. 3, Plate
II, those of 10.5 c, c. two and a half hours after the addition of 0.1 gramme of
Fraser's dry antivenene; and Fig. 8, Plate I, those of 10.5 c. c. two and a half
hours after the addition of 0.01 gramme of dry Daboia-venom. These results
may fairly be taken as indicating an entire absence of any specific solvent
property in cobra-serum, as the evidences of solution present after the lapse of
twenty-four hours were in all probability dependent on early incidence of
putrefactive change incident on the relatively high degree of septic contami-
nation induced by the large quantity of serum which was employed, but this is
not the case as regards Fraser's antivenene, which, as Fig. 3, Plate II,
and the results of other experiments of like nature, clearly demonstrate, does
possess a considerable solvent power. This, however, is not nearly so great as that
of cobra-venom, for, as the illustrations show, 0.1 gramme of antivenene failed to
produce such complete solution as 0.01 gramme of venom gave rise to when act-
ing for a like period on a like quantity of blood.
When we come to deal with the question of the reductive power of cobra-
venom on the respiratory property of hæmoglobin, as illustrated in the table, the
data may at first sight appear to present a want of uniformity or even to be mutually
conflicting, but the discrepancy is only an apparent one and may be easily
accounted for when we come to recognise the fact that the development and