LABIATE. 99 



Only one fatal case Is recorded, and in that the remedy was 



administered in the form 



usu 



al 



manner. 



Mr. G. W. Vidal, C.S., in a letter to the Bomhay Gazette, 

 dated January 30th, 1890, states that the bite of the Phursa snake 

 is apparently fatal in about 20 per cent, of cases, and the action 

 of the poison is slow. He says: ^^In collecting materials for an 

 account of the snahes of Ratnagiri for the Bomhay Gazetteer^ 

 I found (in 1878) records of 62 fatal cases treated at the Civil 

 Hospital. These cases showed that death occurred on an aver- 

 age in four and a half days, though in some instances patients 

 had lingered up to twenty days/* In 1855-56 Dr. Imlach, then 

 Civil Surgeon of Shikarpur, in a description of the *Kapar' 

 [Eekis carinata)^ published in the Transactions of the Bombay 

 Medical and Physical Society (Vol. iii., New Series, p. 80), wrote 

 that '^a reference to police returns will show that in by far the 

 majority of cases serious injury and death have been caused by 

 the bite of this species." In an article upon the ^'Venomous 

 Snakes of North Canara"' {Journ. Ned. Hist. Soc. Bomhay, 

 VoLv.,No. l,p. 69), Mr. Vidal says : — '* There is indeed no doubt 

 that the Echis is a far more potent factor than any other venomous 

 snake in swelling the mortality of the Bombay Presidency, and 

 it is important that this fact should be more generally known 

 and recognised than it has been hitherto. It is, of course, 

 impossible to show the exact percentage of the deaths from 

 snake-bite for which the Echis is responsible. In the returns no 

 attempt is made to discriminate the species to which the recorded 

 deaths are attributable, and little if any reliance could be placed 

 in the statistics, even if such an attempt were made. But the 

 conclusion stated above may, I think, be fairly drawn from the 

 fact, which is very clear from the returns in their present shape, 



J^ch 



the 



om 



i 



while conversely, the mortality is insignificant in other dis- 

 tricts where the Echis is either rare or absent. The following 

 table, which I have compiled with some care and labour from 

 the official returns for the eight years, 1878—85, shows the 



