SNAKES 341 



was little reason to believe in the efficacy of any 

 method of treatment in cases of snake-bite in which 

 a lethal amount of venom had entered the system, 

 but we felt that we ought at least to seem to do 

 something, and the patient was accordingly hurried 

 to the entrance-lodge of the garden by the super- 

 intendent, whilst I packed up the photographic kit 

 and hastened after them. The choice of remedial 

 measures was very limited, and so, after the 

 punctures had been freely enlarged by the aid of an 

 old knife, an energetic coolie was set to suck the 

 wounds, an operation which he carried out with 

 such vigour as to extract not only much blood, but 

 also fragments of the subcutaneous tissues. The 

 patient was then dosed with half a tumbler of coarse 

 brandy, and directed to keep the injured finger 

 immersed in crude brown carbolic acid, and I then 

 left him to pursue my photography, saying that I 

 should come back in half an hour and see whether 

 he were likely to die. I returned in due course 

 and found him not dead, but dead-drunk, and com- 

 plaining bitterly of pain in his finger. He never 

 showed a trace of any symptom of cobrine intoxica- 

 tion, and, though he was laid up for some days by 

 a severe attack of fever, we had an uneasy sense that 

 he was quite right in ascribing his illness rather to 

 our treatment than to the original injury. This 

 case affords an excellent illustration of the manifold 

 sources of fallacy that must be discounted in 



