234 VENOMS 
Nevertheless, accidents sometimes happen to them, and every year 
a few of them succumb in pursuit of their calling (see p. 370). 
Still, it may be asserted that some of them really know how to 
vaccinate themselves against venom, by making young Cobras bite 
them from time to time. 
It is stated by EK. C. Cotes,! formerly of the Calcutta Museum, 
that the Indian snake-charmers do not extract the poison-fangs 
from their snakes. Even though deprived of its fangs, the snake 
would still be dangerous on account of its other teeth, the punc- 
tures of which would provide another channel for the penetration 
of the venom. 
Snake-charmers pretend that they owe their immunity to 
graduated inoculations. This is not yet conclusively proved ; what 
is better established is that they take the greatest care to avoid 
being bitten, and that in so doing they display the most remarkable 
skill. 
Even in France we are acquainted with professional viper- 
catchers, who employ the method of graduated inoculations in 
order to render themselves immune to the bites of indigenous 
reptiles. One of these men, who lives near Arbois (Jura), takes 
good care to get himself bitten, at least once a year, by a young 
viper; when he forgets this precaution and happens to be bitten, 
he always feels the effects much more severely. 
Fraser” (of Edinburgh) thinks that the repeated ingestion of 
small quantities of venom may suffice to confer immunity, and he 
mentions a certain number of experiments performed by him upon 
white rats and kittens, from which it would appear that the in- 
gestion of venom, continued for a long time, finally renders these 
animals absolutely refractory to subcutaneous inoculation with 
doses of the same venom several times greater than the lethal one. 
He therefore concludes that this process of vaccination may prob- 
ably be in use among snake-charmers. 
' Maclure’s Magazine, April, 1894. 
? British Medical Journal, August 17, 1895. 
