Medical Officers of the Army of India. 15
TABLE III —concluded.
Phenomena present in the blood of fowls treated with injections of Cobra-venom—concluded.
No. of
experi-
ment.
Nature of experiment.
Coagulation.
Colour.
Solution of bodies of
erythrocytes.
Reduction in respira-
tory property of
hæmoglobin.
XIII Intravascular injection .
.
Venom, 0.2 gramme.
Immediate death.
Blood taken at death.
Absent
.
.
Very dark, but rapidly
brightening.
At least four-fifths of the
erythrocytes completely dis-
solved and the rest partly
solved or deformed.
Barely perceptible
when the blood was
taken :n o e x a mi n a -
tion subsequently.
XIV Intravascular injection .
.
Venom, 0.25 gramme.
Death immediate.
Blood taken at death.
Absent
.
. Intensely dark and
darkening progres-
sively after being
drawn.
More than half of the ery-
throcytes completely dissolv-
ed and partly solved ones
veryabundant ; complete
solution 3 hours later.
Very great ; complete,
24 hours later.
XV Intravascular injection .
.
Venom, 0.35 gramme.
Death, 3 minutes.
Blood taken at death.
Semi-fluid coagulation
in 1 hour. No con-
traction.
Almost black and
hardly brightening
at all on exposure ;
black, 24 hours.
Very extensive solution ; corn-
plete solution, 24 hours.
Ditto.
In comparing the data contained in this table with those in the preceding one,
it must be borne in mind that we have here to deal with experiments in
which the ratio of venom to blood was almost invariably very much smaller than
it was in the case of the others, and, hence, that any precise correspondence in
the nature of the results in the two series cannot reasonably be looked for. The
ratios of blood to venom in the experiments of Table III were in almost every
instance so much higher than in those of Table II that it cannot rationally be
expected that the evidences of toxic changes should be so conspicuous as they
are in the latter. But, allowing for this, the data do afford good grounds for
the belief that the action of the venom on the blood was essentially alike in
both series of experiments.
In the greater number of the experiments the venom was brought into
direct contact with the blood by means of intravascular injection, because the
results thus attained are more accurately comparable with those attending
mixture of blood and venom outside the body than can be the case in instances
of subcutaneous injection, seeing that, in the latter, it is impossible to estimate
what quantity of venom had actually been absorbed into the vascular system,
and, therefore, what the precise ratios of blood and venom were, at the time
at which death occurred or the specimens of blood were taken.
In all those experiments in which the ratio of venom to blood approached
that which was ordinarily present in the experiments on blood outside the body,
and in some in which it was very much lower, there was unequivocal evidence
of interference with the normal phenomena of coagulation. In experiments VII,
XIII, and XIV coagulation was entirely absent ; and in experiments IV, V, VIII,
IX, and X it was more or less imperfectly carried out.
The colour of the blood when first removed from the vessels was in all
cases very dark, but, except in certain instances in which the ratio of venom