Having last evening killed a moderate sized rattlesnake--Crotalus horridus--which had not bitten anything, I found the gland fully charged with the white opaque poison; on adding iodine solution to a drop of this a dense light-brown precipitate was immediately formed, quite similar to that obtained with most alkaloids, exhibiting under the microscope no crystalline structure.
In the absence of iodine a good extemporaneous solution for testing alkaloids, and perhaps a snake poison antidote, may be made by adding a few drops of ferric chloride to solution of potassium of iodide; this is a very convenient test agent which I used in my laboratory for many years.
Although rattlesnake poison could be obtained here in very considerable quantity, it is out of my power to make such experiments as I could desire, being without any chemical appliances and living a hundred miles or more from any laboratory. The same may be said with regard to books, and possibly the above iodine reaction has been already described.
Dr. Richards states that the cobra poison is destroyed by potassium permanganate; but this is no argument in favor of that salt as an antidote. Mr. Pedler also refers to it, but allows that it would not be probably of any use after the poison had been absorbed. Of this I think there can be no doubt, remembering the easy decomposition of permanganate by most organic substances, and I cannot but think that the medicinal or therapeutic advantages of that salt, taken internally, are equally problematical, unless the action is supposed to take place in the stomach.
In the bladder of the same rattlesnake I found a considerable quantity of light-brown amorphous ammonium urate, the urine pale yellow.--Chemical News.
Hermanitas Ranch, Texas.
THE CHINESE SIGN MANUAL.
[Footnote: Dr. D. J. Macgowan, in Medical Reports of China. 1881.]