his assistance, applied the serpent-stone, fire, and scarifications, but they were all ineffectual; his blood was already _coagulated_.[94] About an hour after I saw the body as they were going to burn it, and I thought I perceived some indications of a _complete dissolution of the blood_.” [94] There must certainly be some error here; for as he mentions a _dissolution_ of the blood so soon afterwards, we should think it impossible that any coagulation would have taken place. Perhaps the word only imports that the circulation was completely stopped. The bite of the _brulan_ or _burning serpent_, according to the same author, is almost as terrible. “This is nearly of the same form with the last, its skin is not quite so deep a brown, and is speckled with dark green spots: its poison is almost as dangerous, but it is less active, and its effects are very different. In some persons it is a devouring fire, which, as it circulates through the veins, presently occasions death; the blood dissolves into a lymphatic liquor resembling thin broth, without apparently having passed through the intermediate state of _coagulation_,[95] and runs from eyes, nose and ears, and even through the pores. In other subjects the poison seems to have changed the very nature of the humours in dissolving them; the skin is chapped and becomes scaly, the hair falls off, the members are tumefied, the patient feels all over his body the most racking pains, then numbness, and is not long in perishing.” [95] The blood certainly does not coagulate in the vessels, in any case whatever, unless by injecting something into them. From these accounts it is plain that poisons do operate very powerfully on the blood; and if they do so in one case it is reasonable to think that they do so in all. According to the degree of strength of the poison, however, we are sure that the effects will be more or less visible to us; but, though we should not be able to perceive any alteration whatever in the consistence or colour of the vital fluid, we cannot positively say that it has not undergone any change; for the spirit which operates in it is too subtile for our observation. In the beginning of almost all diseases, perhaps, blood drawn from a vein will not be perceptibly different from that of a person in health; and Dr. Fordyce particularly takes notice of this in fevers; but as the disease goes on, an alteration becomes very perceptible, which gives just ground for suspicion, that there had been some alteration from the very first, though invisible to us.