SWALLOWING SNAKE VENOM. 341 
covering them. The lungs were not visibly damaged. Re- 
moving the skin from the thigh which the Puff Adders had bitten 
without apparently producing any poisonous effects, I found the 
muscles in the vicinity of the punctures to be very much dis- 
coloured with blood, which had oozed into them. This dis- 
colouration was traced up, and half-way along the muscles of 
the ribs on one side. Growing fainter and fainter, it disappeared. 
It was quite apparent that those Puff Adders had not succeeded 
in injecting sufficient venom to cause serious symptoms. If the 
jackal had not been dissected, the extravasated blood would 
have been absorbed by degrees without any outward symptoms 
being apparent. An examination of the jackal’s stomach and 
intestines showed them to be perfectly normal. Evidently the 
copious internal dosing with venom had not produced any ill- | 
effects. 
I keep a half-grown Chacma Baboon which, for the past four 
months, I have fed at intervals with Cape Cobra venom. The 
venom has, so far, produced no poisonous effects, although by 
now it must have swallowed something like a quarter of an 
ounce of venom. 
This is contrary to the prevalent belief among scientific men 
in regard to Cobra venom. 
Many people think that experiments on animals are not 
satisfactory. They seem to think that the human animal is 
altogether different in his composition. This is by no means 
so. The structure of a human being is exactly the same as that 
of a warm-blooded lower animal (mammal). The mechanism 
of his body works in the same way in all respects. Like the 
various species of lower animals, man differs in shape, but that 
does not alter the fact that he is physiologically the same as they 
are. Man differs in a physical sense from all lower animals in 
having a larger and more complex brain. He has evolved 
faculties of the mind which none of the lower animals possess. 
True, he has brain organs similar to theirs, but he has added 
many more which make him what he is. 
