CROTALIDA. 87 
immediately coil itself around it, and wait for you to try and 
take it away. It is a common custom for the Curers, when 
they meet with one in the woods, to throw down a hat, and 
then go to the house or village to get some one to kill the 
snake for them, as they are superstitious about killing one 
themselves; they say it makes them fail oftener in performing 
cures ! 
The Crotalus “ bites high,” to use the Curers’ expression. 
It is said always to wound above the knee, and by judging of 
the distance of the wound from the ground, they calculate 
whether the individual was large, medium-sized, or small. 
This rule appears to be deduced entirely from observation and 
experience, and it is not strange that these Curers are almost 
worshipped by the common people (like the magicians and 
soothsayers of olden times), when you see them examine 
a person bitten, and hear them say: “The snake will be 
found in such a place; it is so long” (measuring the length on 
the floor), and learn that the reptile has been found at or near 
the spot indicated, and is—with little difference—of the length 
foretold. 
The poison of the Rattlesnake has been considered to be 
the specific cure for leprosy ; but an experiment, made a few 
years since in Brazil by some allopathic physicians,* upon one 
M. J. Machado, added another name to the list of victims 
sacrificed under the protection of the law, in the name of 
science, without the results of the trial or experiment having 
given to the world aught in recompense for such heroic ab- 
negation. 
The Orotalus Oraspedocephalus Brasiliensis, found in Brazil, 
is said to be very deadly; but no description of it has, as 
yet, been given. 
* See Mure’s Pathogenesie Brésillienne. 
