VENO BENO (La). See Tea.
VENOM. Drs Brunton and Fayrer, who have devoted many years to the study of the nature and physiological action of snake poisons, state that there appears to be some resemblance in the action of the venom or virus of the cobra, Naja tripudians, and of curara, the arrow-poison of the Indians; both
poisons causing death by paralysing the respiratory organs.
Dr Armstrong, who has analysed the cobra poison, has not been enabled to isolate from it any crystalline principle. From its reactions he concludes that its chief ingredient is an albuminoid substance.
Dr Armstrong obtained a white precipitate from the poison by treating it with absolute alcohol, and also prepared an alcoholic extract from it.
He gives the following as the composition of the three substances. The albumen is appended for comparison:—
| Crude Poison. | Alcoholic Precipitate. | Alcoholic extract. | Albumen. | |
| Carbon | 43·55 | 45·76 | 43·04 | 53·5 |
| Nitrogen | 43·30 | 14·30 | 12·45 | 15·7 |
| Hydrogen | ... | 6·60 | 7·00 | 7·1 |
| Sulphur | ... | 2·50 | ... | ... |
| Ash | ... | Traces. |
“But although there is little difference between the composition of the alcoholic precipitate and extract, there is an immense difference between their physiological action, the extract being a virulent poison, the precipitate almost inert. This is notably different from what has been stated by Dr Weir Mitchell respecting the poison of the rattlesnake, viz., that the alcoholic precipitate is active, whilst the extract is inert.”[255]
[255] “Royal Society’s Proceedings,” ‘Pharm. Journ.’
VENTILA′TION. The proper ventilation of our habitations, as well as of other buildings in which we pass any considerable portion of our time, is quite as necessary to health as food and clothing. Lavoisier, writing in the middle of the last century, remarks—“It is certain that mankind degenerate when employed in sedentary manufactures, or living in crowded houses, or in the narrow lanes of large cities; whereas they improve in their nature and constitution in most of the country labours which are carried on in the open air.” Yet many persons, by the care which they take to shut out fresh air, and to prevent the escape of that which their own bodies, by pulmonary and surfacial respiration, have contaminated, would seem to hug to themselves the discomfort of breathing over and over again an impure and unrefreshing atmosphere, and to be anxious to finish their career by lingering suicide. The almost universal indifference to the subject, considering its importance, is unaccountable.