206 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



serpents, and that to this diet they probably owed 

 their reputed magical art in withstanding the 

 action of serpent venom. Again, a traveller in 

 Egypt, Hasselquist, tells us how the serpent- 

 charmers there eat serpents, making them into a 

 kind of broth, and that invariably before starting 

 off to catch these reptiles they partake of some 

 of it. 



In a paper by Mr. T. R. Rao on the Yanades 

 tribe of the Nellore district, Madras Presidency, 

 the author mentions that these strange people 

 have, amongst other characteristics, absolutely no 

 fear in catching cobras, which they draw out of 

 their holes without any alarm as to their fangs, 

 and that they appear to protect themselves against 

 the effects of snake-bites by swallowing the poison- 

 sacs of snakes. 



Bruce describes how he saw a serpent-charmer 

 in Cairo who allowed himself to be bitten by a 

 viper between the forefinger and the thumb, and 

 made no endeavour whatever to apply remedies, 

 neither did he exhibit the slightest anxiety as to 

 the consequences. That this was no trick, and 

 that the viper was really possessed of all its deadly 

 faculties at the time it bit the man, was proved by 

 the fact that a pelican subsequently bitten by the 

 same animal died in thirteen minutes. Bruce also 

 tells of a man who "with his naked hand took a 



