GHAPTER Xi. 
THE SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT OF SNAKE BITE. 
PERMANGANATE OF POTASH—RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS— 
THE SERUM TREATMENT. 
EXPERIMENTS by Doctors Brunton, Fayrer, Rogers, Martin, 
Lamb, Richards, Lacerda, and other eminent authorities show 
that perchloride of platinum, chloride of gold, and permanganate 
of potash are all chemical antidotes to the venom of snakes. 
It was found that if any one of these three salts was mixed with 
an equal weight of venom it instantly neutralized it. Perman- 
ganate of potash being the cheapest and easiest to apply was 
selected, carefully tested, and found to have the power of imme- 
diately destroying the toxic properties of snake venom. It was 
found to be equally effective with the venom of a great number 
of venomous snakes—in fact all kinds of venom. By experi- 
mentation I have found it kills the poisonous properties of the 
venom of all South African snakes, and that of venomous insects. 
The potash was mixed in equal proportions with various snake 
venoms and injected direct into the veins and tissues of animals, 
and no symptoms of poisoning followed. This has been tested 
on various species of animals by many other experimenters. 
In the work on the “ Poison of Venomous Snakes,” by 
Doctors Brunton, Rogers, and Fayrer, there is the following 
interesting account of some experiments by Dr. V. Richards :— 
“In the winter of 1881 a number of experiments were made 
by Dr. Vincent Richards, who found, like the previous experi- 
menters, that Cobra venom was completely destroyed by per- 
manganate of potash when mixed with it in vitro, so that death 
did not follow the injection of the mixture either hypodermically 
or into a vein. He found also that when Cobra poison was 
injected into a dog and the injection made either immediately 
or after an interval of four minutes into the same part by a 
hypodermic injection, of a solution of permanganate of potash, no 
