ite.

He was called early one morning to visit a little boy, two years old,
and on examination found that he presented symptoms almost identical
with those of snakebite poisoning. Although there was no evidence of the
child having come in contact with a snake, the writer naturally
concluded that during the night a snake had obtained access to the
bedroom through the open door or window, and after biting the child
sleeping in its low cot, had escaped again. He therefore searched most
carefully for the usual two punctures, but they were not to be found.
The child evidently laboured under the effect of some poison, and
spiderbite suggested itself, but the symptoms were so much more
aggravated than anything the writer had frequently seen of spiderbite
that he hesitated to accept it as the cause, although it appeared almost
the only possible one. A careful inquiry into the history of the case
elicited from the mother the important fact that on the previous
afternoon the little fellow, just able to toddle about, had gradually
lost the use of his legs, and also become very peevish, and that
suspecting nothing but a little temporary indisposition, she had put him
to bed, to find him in the morning all but dead. He was scarcely
breathing when the writer saw him, and only the stethoscope gave
evidence of the heart still beating feebly. His body was very cold,
pupils widely dilated, and the sight even apparently gone, the eyes wide
open, staring fixedly upwards and not noticing a lighted match in
closest proximity to them. Consciousness also appeared extinct, as
liquids introduced into the mouth were not swallowed. Examining once
more for traces of spiderbite in the skin, the writer noticed faint red
stripes extending up the arm from a little cut on the right index finger
near the nail, and on inquiry it was ascertained at last from an elder
brother that he had seen the child pick up a little black spider with a
red back, hold it for some time between thumb and index finger, and then
throw it away. This was evidently the Katipo (_Latrodectus icelio_), the
poison of which acts on the same principle as snake-poison, but
generally much milder. The greater severity of its action in this case
was accounted for by the mandibles having been inserted into the cut,
and the insect, being squeezed by the child, having emptied the whole
available contents of its poison gland into the cellular tissue exposed
in the cut, whence it was quickly a