with strychnine the ordinary doses must be greatly exceeded,
and that its administration must be continued, even if the total
quantity injected within an hour or two amounts to what in the absence
of snake-poison would be a dangerous if not a fatal dose. Timidity in
handling the drug is fraught with far more danger than a bold and
fearless use of it. The few failures among its numerous successes
recorded during the last four years in Australia were nearly all
traceable to the antidote not having been injected in sufficient
quantity. Even slight tetanic convulsions, which were noticed in a few
cases, invariably passed off quickly. It should be borne in mind that of
the two poisons warring with each other that of the snake is by far the
most insidious and dangerous one, more especially in its effects on the
vaso-motor centres. The latter are wrought very insidiously, and where
they predominate require the most energetic use of the antidote, for
whilst the timid practitioner after injecting as much strychnine as he
deems safe stands idly by waiting for its effects, the snake virus, not
checked by a sufficient quantity of it, continues its baneful work,
drawing the blood mass into the paralysed abdominal veins and finally by
arrested heart action bringing on sudden collapse. In such cases even
some tetanic convulsions are of little danger and may actually be
necessary to overcome the paralysis of the splanchnicus and with it that
of the other vaso-motor centres.

Whilst then it must be laid down as a principle that the antidote should
be administered freely and without regard to the quantity that may be
required to develop symptoms of its own physiological action, the doses
in which it is injected and the intervals between them must be left to
the practitioner's judgment, as they depend in every case on the
quantity of snake-poison absorbed, the time elapsed since its inception
and the corresponding greater or lesser urgency of the symptoms. If the
latter denote a large dose to have been imparted and it has been in the
system for hours, delay is dangerous and nothing less than 16 minims of
liq. strychnine P.B., in very urgent cases even 20 to 25 minims should
be injected to any person over 15 years of age. Even children may
require these large doses, as they are determined by the quantity of the
poison they have to counteract and are kept in check by it. The action
of the antidote is so prompt and decisive that not more than