On the Bite of Serpents. »1 29 



serpents, siich as the copper-head, &c. I feel no disposi- 

 tion to exhaust any of my time in experimenting with all, or 

 even a twentieth part^ of the many vegetables which have 

 been praised and employed for these purposes in different 

 parts of the United States. Many of these are unquestion- 

 ably inert, and I think I have elsewhere shown how they 

 have acquired their reputation *; I am far from denyiniT 

 that some of the vegetables to which I allude are deservino- 

 of a portion of the praise which has been bestowed upon 

 them. The seneca snake-root {polygala senega of Lin- 

 n»us) is, without doubt, a plant of great powers; and may 

 be worthy of our attention as a remedy against the bite of 

 venomous serpents. You know that among the Indians 

 this plant has sustained a high reputation in this respect. 

 One of my correspondents (Mr. Samuel Preston, of this 

 state,) has communicated to me a case which is worthy of 

 being mentioned. In the year 1798, a man, whilst he was 

 mowing, was bitten by a rattlesnake in the little toe of his 

 foot. Almost instantly he was seized with a pain in his 

 breast and eyes. Tiie leg became greatly swoUeUj and vio- 

 lent svinptonis of a genume tetanus ensued. The seneca, 

 which was at hand, was boiled in milk, and the patient 

 drank large (juantities of the decoction, at the same time 

 rtiat the rout, in the shape of a poultice, was applied to the 

 part immediately wounded. The medicine threw him into 

 a profuse perspiration ; in a short time all his spasms sub- 

 Bided, and at the end of two days he was able to return to 

 his occupation of mowing again. 



This case, to which 1 have alluded in my Elements of 

 Ijotani/, part iii. p. 103, is certainly an important one, as 

 I tliink it plainly shows that the seneca is a medicine well 

 adapted to sorne cases of the bite of a rattlesnake. 1 rather 

 regret that, in the work just mentioned, I should have used 

 the following v.ords when speaking of the medicine: — 

 " Its great virtues as a remedy for the bite of the rattle- 

 snake may, I believe, be safely called in question." I am 

 far, indeed, from supposing that it is an infallilile medicine 

 or specific : on the contrary, I have not a doubt that it 

 would fail to effect a cure in many cases of the bites of ve- 

 nomous serpents. What relief could we expect from it, or 

 indeed from any thing else, in cases (such as the one in 

 Jersey) where death was induced in less than half an houi ? 

 I siiall not omit to try the eil'ccts of the volatile alkali, 

 liitherlo I have not used it, because I had iilialgined that 



* Tr>ii)..:K.rions (if ihc American Philosophical Society, vol. iii. no. 11. 

 \'oi.. XVII. No. 60, I corrc.:t 



