i 4 2 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



Accordingly the experiment was made. The horse was 

 given a full dose of snake poison, and did not suffer any 

 inconvenience. At intervals of two days it was given 

 increasing injections of snake poison without suffering 

 in any way, until at last an injection in one dose of 

 thirty times the deadly quantity of snake poison that 

 is, enough to kill thirty unprepared horses was made 

 into the same horse, and it did not show the smallest 

 inconvenience. The question was thus answered : 

 Immunity to snake-bite can be conferred by the 

 absorption of small quantities (non-lethal doses) of 

 snake poison. The next question was this : " If some- 

 thing nas been formed in the horse's blood by this 

 process, which is an antidote to snake poison, should it 

 not be possible, by removing some of the horsed blood 

 and injecting a small quantity of it into a smaller 

 animal, to protect that animal from snake bite ? " The 

 experiment was accordingly made. Rabbits and dogs 

 received injections of the blood of the immune horse. 

 An hour after they received full doses of snake poison. 

 They suffered no inconvenience at all ; they were 

 " protected," or " rendered immune.'" The next 

 question was, " Will the antidote act on an animal after 

 it has already been bitten by a snake ?" The 

 experiment was made. Rabbits were injected with 

 snake poison. After a quarter of an hour they were 

 on the point of death. A dose of the immune horse's 

 blood was now injected into each in ten minutes they 

 had completely recovered and were feeding. The means 

 was thus found of preventing death from snake-bite. 

 The protective horse-blood was properly prepared, and 

 sent out at once to Cochin China and to India. It was 

 there tried upon human beings who had been 

 accidentally bitten by deadly snakes, and it proved 

 absolutely effective ; it saved the men's lives. It is now 

 used (wherever it can be obtained in time) as the sure 

 antidote to snake-bite, though it is not at present 



