THE ANTIDOTE.
The theory of the action of snake-poison as that of a specific nerve-poison, depressing and more or less suspending the function of the motor nerve-centres throughout the body, has in the foregoing pages received a double proof of its correctness.
In the first place, all the symptoms the snake-poison produces have been passed in review, and shown to be fully explainable by this theory. On this ground alone it may be claimed to have been fully established; for it is an axiom in science that a theory on any subject must be accepted as correct, if it accounts satisfactorily for all the phenomena observable in connection with that subject by showing them to result from the operation of one law. The second inductive proof of the correctness of the writer's theory has been rendered by the experiments of Feoktistow on animals.
Science, however, demands that a theory thus established inductively must also stand the test of practical application or deduction. It says in the present case:—"Granting your theory to be correct, it is but a theory, which, however valuable it may be as a contribution to science, is of little value to mankind if you cannot apply it practically. If snake-poison merely acts as a depressant on motor nerve-cells without interfering with their structure, you must be able to counteract it by administering some drug or substance which acts as a powerful stimulant on these cells, if such a substance can be found."
It is another illustration of that wise adaptation of means to ends which, throughout the domain of nature, denotes the presence and rule of a Supreme Intelligence, that this substance has been provided for us by nature, though we have been long in finding it. Its discovery in strychnine, and its successful application as the long and vainly sought antidote to snake-poison, are glorious triumphs of scientific deduction.
Strychnine is the exact antithesis to snake-poison in its action. Under its influence every motor nerve-cell throughout the system sends forth stronger currents of nerve force than it does in its normal state. These currents run alike from cell to cell, and from cell to peripheral fibre, and act by means of the latter on all contractile, and especially all muscular tissue, causing contractions, which, after poisonous doses of the drug, assume the form of tetanic convulsions, provoked by the slightest touch or even noise in consequence of highly intensified reflex action.
Whilst, then, snake-poison, as we have seen, turns off the motor-batteries and reduces the volume and force of motor-nerve currents, strychnine, when following it as an antidote, turns them on again, acting with the unerring certainty of a chemical test, if administered in sufficient quantity. Purely physiological in its action, it neutralises the effects of the snake-poison, and announces, by unmistakable symptoms, when it has accomplished this task, and would, if continued, become a poison itself. Previous to this announcement its poisonous action is completely neutralised by the snake-poison, and the latter would therefore be equally as efficacious in strychnine-poisoning as strychnine is in snake-poisoning. Strychnine, in short, is the antidote par excellence of snake-poison, and cannot be surpassed by any other substance known to us.
With the symptoms following the introduction of the subtle ophidian virus into the human and animal system so markedly pointing to strychnine as the antidote, it appears a matter of surprise that it was not used as such before and that it was left to the writer to discover the antagonism between the two poisons. Misleading experiments with the drug on animals erroneously considered to be final in their results, together with confused and contradictory notions about the action of snake-poison, were the chief factors, already pointed out, that caused research on this important subject to remain for centuries so barren of results, and made even able investigators with more correct views than the rest, postpone the discovery of a physiological antidote to a more advanced state of science, when all the time it was lying ready at their hands.