Professor Halford, of the University of Melbourne, in a paper published at the commencement of 1869, recommended the injection of liquor ammoniæ into the veins for snake bite. Of twenty cases of snake bite since treated in this manner, by different practitioners, recovery occurred in seventeen. The snakes were all venomous, and included the tiger snake, the brown and black snake of Australia, &c. These, according to Professor Halford, are as deadly as the cobra and rattlesnakes of India. The plan of proceeding is to expose the vein, and then to pierce its coats with the sharp point of a hypodermic syringe containing the officinal liquor ammoniæ—sp. grav. 0·959. At least thirty minims are to be employed; the dose being repeated as the power of the preceding injection is expended. Professor Halford formerly thought that in consequence of the entrance of the snake poison into the blood a rapid growth of new cells occurred, which took up and exhausted the fibrin and oxygen of the blood, and rendered them incapable of ministering to the wants of the system. He now thinks that the new corpuscles are only the white corpuscles of the blood altered and enlarged, the change in them being caused by an alteration in the liquor sanguinis; this alteration being, in fact, a disappearance of the fibrin under the action of the poison. The ammonia is believed to counteract this power, and in favor of this view many Australian physicians have spoken strongly. Dr. Fayrer, however, has found the proceeding a failure in India. This gentleman is of opinion that the activity of the poison in some Indian snakes is so great that it is impossible to counteract it by any method. The constitutional remedies are derived chiefly from the class of diffusible stimulants. No agent is more generally recommended than ammonia; and therefore the officinal compound tincture of ammonia (formerly known as eau de luce) should be given in half-drachm doses, well diluted; or the aromatic spirits of ammonia may be administered in the proportion of two drachms to an ounce and a half of water. Supposing that no ammonia is at hand, brandy will prove an excellent substitute. Transfusion of blood has been likewise recommended; but I do not know of any instance in which it has been resorted to.