THE BITE OF RUSSELL'S VIPERN 



A. E. SPAAR 

 (Civil Hospital^ Trincomalee, Ceylon.) 



At midnight on April 6, 1910, I was hastily summoned to see 

 the late Mr. Macintyre, Postmaster of Trincomalee, who had been 

 bitten by a polonga. On arrival at bis residence, thirty to forty 

 minutes after the accident, I found him seated erect on a chair on 

 bis verandah. He was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat, and com- 

 plained of feeling sick, and was vomiting continually. The ejected 

 matter consisted of a few grains of boiled rice and water and bile- 

 stained fluid, and later on of glairy mucus. He had been attended 

 to, within five or ten minutes of the accident, by a constable, who 

 applied to the wound a black '* snake stone " such as I have seen in 

 the possession of "snake charmers." Internally a remedy, prepared 

 by dissolving part of a light green stone in water, had been admin- 

 istered with the object of producing vomiting. 



The Postmaster stated that about ten minutes after he retired to 

 bed he heard a noise as of heavy breathing, and imagining that it 

 was his little boy who was asleep, he walked over to the latter's cot, 

 about four feet away. Making him comfortable, he was returning 

 to his own bed, when he feit a sharp sting over his heel, and jumped 

 into bed. Simultaneously, hissing sounds were heard, and it imme- 

 diately Struck him that he must have been bitten by a snake. A 

 light was brought into the room, which had been in darkness, and a 

 search made, and a polonga was found coiled up in a corner. Three 

 hemp ligatures were applied by his wife round the injured limb: 

 one just above the ankle, another round the knee, and the other 

 round the lower part of the thigh. The wound is said to have 

 bled freely, staining all the bed linen. Careful examination, after 

 cleansing of the limb, revealed a single, black, pin-point puncture on 



^Reprinted, through the courtesy of Dr. Louis Hussakof, from Spolia Zey- 

 lanica, 1910, vi, pp. 188-190. 



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