The action of the venom is commonly so swift that its effects are manifested almost immediately after inoculation, being at once conveyed by the circulatory system to the great nervous centers of the body, resulting in rapid paralysis of such organs as are supplied with motive power from these sources; its physiological and toxicological realizations being more or less speedy accordingly as it is applied near or remote from these centers, or infused into the capillary or the venous circulation.  Usually, too, an unfortunate experiences, perhaps instantaneously, an intense burning pain in the member lacerated, which is succeeded by vertigo, nausea, retching, fainting, coldness, and collapse; the part bitten swells, becomes discolored, or spotted over its surface with livid blotches, that may, ultimately, extend to the greater portion of the body, while the poison appears to effect a greater or less disorganization of the blood, not by coagulating its fibrine as Fontana surmised, but in dissolving, attenuating, and altering the form of its corpuscles, whose integrity is so essential to life, causing them to adhere to one another, and to the walls of the vessels by which they are conveyed; being no longer able to traverse the capillaries, oedema is produced, followed by the peculiar livid blush.  Shakespeare would appear to have had intuitive perception of the nature of such subtle poison, when he caused the ghost to describe to Hamlet

  “The leprous distillment whose effect
   Bears such an enmity to the blood of man
   That swift as quicksilver, it courses through
   The natural gates and alleys of the body
   And with sudden vigor it doth posset
   And curd like eager droppings into milk,
   The thin and wholesome blood:  so did it mine
   And a most instant tetter marked about
   Most lazar like, with vile and loathsome crust
   All my smooth body.”

It is not to be supposed, however, that all or even a major portion of the blood disks require to be changed or destroyed to produce a fatal result, since death may supervene long before such a consummation can be realized.  It is the capillary circulation that suffers chiefly, since the very size and caliber of the heart cavities and trunk vessels afford them comparative immunity.  But of the greatly dissolved and disorganized condition of the blood that may occur secondarily, we have evidences in the passive haemorrhages that attack those that have recovered from the immediate effects of serpent poisoning, following or coincident with subsidence of swelling and induration; and, as with scurvy, bleeding may occur from the mouth, throat, lungs, nose, and bowels, or from ulcerated surfaces and superficial wounds, or all together, defying all styptics and haemastatics.  In a case occurring under the care of Dr. David Brainerd in the Illinois General Hospital,[6] blood flowed from the gums in great profusion, and on examination was found destitute,