14 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



therapico," designed for the study of the effects of the 

 venom of poisonous Brazilian snakes. Its director is Doc- 

 tor Vital Brazil, who has performed a most extraordinary 

 work and whose experiments and investigations are not 

 only of the utmost value to Brazil but will ultimately be 

 recognized as of the utmost value for humanity at large. 

 I know of no institution of similar kind anywhere. It has 

 a fine modern building, with all the best appliances, in which 

 experiments are carried on with all kinds of serpents, liv- 

 ing and dead, with the object of discovering all the prop- 

 erties of their several kinds of venom, and of developing 

 various anti-venom serums which nullify the effects of the 

 different venoms. Every effort is made to teach the peo- 

 ple at large by practical demonstration in the open field 

 the lessons thus learned in the laboratory. One notable 

 result has been the diminution in the mortality from snake- 

 bites in the province of Sao Paulo. 



In connection with his institute, and right by the 

 laboratory, the doctor has a large serpentarium, in which 

 quantities of the common poisonous and non-poisonous 

 snakes are kept, and some of the rarer ones. He has de- 

 voted considerable time to the effort to find out if there 

 are any natural enemies of the poisonous snakes of his 

 country, and he has discovered that the most formidable 

 enemy of the many dangerous Brazilian snakes is a non- 

 poisonous, entirely harmless, rather uncommon Brazilian 

 snake, the mussurama. Of all the interesting things the 

 doctor showed us, by far the most interesting was the op- 

 portunity of witnessing for ourselves the action of the mus- 

 surama toward a dangerous snake. 



The doctor first showed us specimens of the various 



