For reasons which we have already explained, the patient should be carefully preserved in a warm atmosphere; and his body should be placed in an easy reclining posture, and be disencumbered of all tight bandages. These precautions are of the utmost moment, for many of those cases of inebriety which stand recorded in our journals, have terminated fatally, for want of attention to them.
ANIMAL POISONS.
This extensive kingdom of Nature presents us with a variety of objects destructive to human life; their agency, however, is on many occasions involved in impenetrable obscurity, and we are not even able to discover whether their deleterious effects depend upon certain definite principles, or upon the combination of circumstances connected with the individuals upon whom they act; and which thus render many substances relatively poisonous, that are innocuous to the general mass of mankind. With regard to the chemical laws by which animal compounds are governed, and the principles upon which their analysis may be conducted, the same observations will apply as those with which we introduced the consideration of vegetable poisons.
Cl. IV. SEPTIC POISONS.
The Bites of Venomous Animals.
Of the whole class of serpents, which according to Linnæus contains 132 species, Plenck assures us that only 24 are venomous. Of these, Europe has only 5, and England but 2; all of which are vipers, viz. Coluber Aspis; C. Chersea; C. Prester (black viper, peculiar to England); C. Illyricus (inhabits the mountains of Sclavonia); C. Berus, (the common viper of Germany, Spain, Italy, and England.)
The venom of the viper is contained in a bag situated on both sides of the head, beneath the muscle of the superior jaw; it is secreted from the blood by a gland which lies just behind the orbit of the eye; from which a duct proceeds to the above-mentioned bag; in the upper jaw are situated two moveable teeth, very sharp towards the point, and hollowed nearly throughout their length. When the animal intends to bite, he presses the bag by means of the muscle, the venom comes out, arrives at the base of the tooth, passes through the sheath which envelopes it, and enters into its cavity by a hole which is found at this base; then it flows along the hollow of the tooth, and issues into the wound by the opening which is near its end, for the point itself is solid and sharp, in order that it may better penetrate the flesh of its victim. If these fangs be removed, or their structure destroyed, the viper is necessarily rendered harmless; whence Galen has observed that the mountebanks used to stop these perforations of the teeth with some kind of paste, whenever they suffered the vipers to bite them before spectators.
Symptoms occasioned by the Bite of a Viper.
Acute pain in the wounded part, attended with almost immediate tumefaction; the part appears first red, and then livid; the local affection extends itself, and the surrounding skin becomes similarly affected. The pulse is small, frequent, and irregular; the respiration is disturbed; the patient complains of great debility, and faintness which often amounts to syncope; vomiting takes place; pain is felt in the umbilical region, and he becomes jaundiced; and, in fatal cases, the wound assumes a malignant character, and gangrene takes place.
In this country the affection is rarely mortal,[[477]] although the circumstances of constitutional debility, unusual heat of season, and injudicious treatment, have in several instances led to a fatal issue.