THE VENOMS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 543 



its head close to the ground, keeping its body constrained 

 with his foot, while his comrade took from his own mouth a 

 quid of tobacco, which he forced into that of the snake. The 

 reptile was then released, and had not crawled a couple of 

 yards before it was convulsed, swelling and dying within a 

 short time. Leaves of tobacco as a plaister, or chopped 

 tobacco as a poultice, are applied to a bite by the American 

 backwoodsmen, after the custom of the Indians ; or finely 

 chopped tobacco, mixed with moist gunpowder and some 

 pulverized sulphur, formed into a plaister, and laid on the 

 wound, and then set fire to. Tschudi, in his Travels in Pent, 

 p. 434, saw this remedy successfully applied by an Indian to 

 his wife's bitten foot. A nausea-exciting drug was swallowed 

 at the same time. With the copperhead snake {Ancistrodon 

 contortrix) it is equally efficacious. These and rattlesnakes 

 are said to be never found in tobacco fields. 



Strychnine appears to have a similar effect to tobacco on 

 snakes. Fayrer found cobras extremely susceptible to the in- 

 fluence of s trychnine. An almost impalpable quantity caused 

 a cobra to ' twist itself up in a rigid series of coils and die.* 



A good many experiments have been tried by a subcu- 

 taneous injection of strychnine into dogs and other animals, 

 immediately after being bitten, but without sufficient success 

 to warrant the adoption of it as an infallible remedy. In 

 some of the cases, indeed, the deaths from tetanus suggest 

 the question, * Did the cats and dogs die from venom, or 

 from strychnine .'' ' As virulent poisons are administered in 

 virulent cases, how would it be to swalloiu strychnine in 

 chemically-prepared doses ^ 



Carbolic acid is another drug which produces powerful 



