SNAKE-CHARMERS 239 
‘I was vaccinated,” writes Colonel Serpa Pinto, ‘at Inham- 
bane (on the East Coast of Africa), among the Vatuas. These 
people extract the poison of a snake which is known in Portuguese 
as the Alcatifa (i.e., carpet), and is so called on account of the 
variegated colour of its skin, which resembles a carpet. I am not 
acquainted with the means employed in order to obtain the poison, 
which is mixed with vegetable substances, and forms with the 
latter a dark brown viscid paste. 
‘Two parallel incisions, 5 millimetres in length, are made in 
the skin, and into these is introduced the paste containing the 
poison. These incisions are made on the arms, near the junction 
of the radius and ulna with the carpal bones, on the back of the 
hand, on the back, on the shoulder-blades, and on the feet, near 
the great toes. After the operation the natives exact an oath that 
the vaccinated one will never kill a poisonous snake, because they 
say that henceforth the snake is his intimate friend, and they throw 
upon him an Alcatifa snake, which does not bite him. 
“After undergoing this operation my whole body was swollen 
up for a week, and I underwent every possible kind of suffering. 
‘TL have never been bitten by any snake, and cannot vouch for 
the infallibility of this remedy. The Vatuas do so, however, and 
they never kill a snake. 
‘ À short time after having been vaccinated, I was stung, when 
in the Seychelle Islands, by a scorpion, which did me no harm. 
Ten years later, at the time of my journey across Africa, I was 
stung by another scorpion which hurt me dreadfully, and for a 
week I thought that I was going to die or lose my arm.” 
Mystification and superstitious ideas play, as we see, a very 
great part in this preventive treatment, which is undergone by the 
natives of certain countries and snake-catchers or charmers. But 
it is not very surprising that, thanks to successive and repeated 
inoculations, a man can succeed in acquiring sufficient immunity 
to preserve himself from snake-bites. 
In ancient times it was even pretended that it was possible for 
