Another cause that has largely contributed to render experiments on animals so barren of results must be sought in the injudicious selection of substances intended to serve as antidotes. It is simply impossible to act on an organic compound like snake-poison, coursing through a living system, by chemicals that will either combine with it or decompose it in a manner likely to deprive it of its deadly qualities and render it innocuous. Yet what do we find? Acids and alkalis, arsenic, bromides and iodides, chlorine, mercurial preparations, &c., &c., have been poured into the luckless animals as if they were so many test tubes. A chemical antidote, a substance possessing special affinity to snake-poison and by means of this affinity combining with it in some mysterious and incomprehensible manner, one can hardy imagine to exist. Physiological antidotes, on the other hand, substances acting on the system in a manner the exact reverse of, and in direct antagonism to the snake-poison, though apparently the only feasible ones, have been strangely neglected and almost despised by experimenters. In the vast storehouse of Nature the department most likely to furnish such antidotes is the vegetable kingdom. The untutored human mind has for centuries past intuitively clung to this idea, and sought among plants for remedies against the deadly ophidian poison. Hence the great number of vegetable antidotes that have from time to time been recommended and the efficacy of some of which at least has been confirmed by reliable observations. But the hint thus given to science was not taken. Instead of research being pushed on diligently in the only direction that promised any chance of success, it was cut short by the baneful method of experimenting on animals. When it had been demonstrated that a dog, a cat, or other animal, after having been saturated with snake-poison, did not recover after the administration of an alleged antidote, the illogical conclusion was drawn at once that it could not possibly be of any use to man, whilst, in reality, the only proof rendered by the experiment, if made properly, was that the respective antidote could not be relied on in treating animals of the class experimented on. That some of these despised antidotes are worth a little further investigation may, in the light of present experience as to the value of strychnine in snakebite, be inferred from the fact, that among them is the wood of _Strychnos Colubrina_, and also the well-known _Huang Noo_, a vegetable extract made from another variety of the Strychnos family, and largely used by the Chinese, whilst, according to a letter in the _Australasian Medical Gazette_, July, 1892, the principal ingredient of a strange compound used by the native snake doctors of Central America with much success is _Nux Vomica_.