384 LEAVES FROM THE 



the-way remedies which the savage and the half-civilized 

 man successfully use came into my mind. Their cures, 

 if we may believe honest witnesses, are far more frequent 

 than those effected by European science. 



Labat, when in the West Indies, was called to confess 

 a young negro, who had been bitten by a serpent seven 

 feet long, and as big as a man's leg, three fingers' breadth 

 above the ankle. The serpent had been killed, under the 

 idea that when it was dead the poison, by some sympa- 

 thetic law, would act with less force. The patient was 

 lying on a plank in the middle of his hut, between two 

 fires, covered with blankets, and yet he said he was 

 dying with cold, at the same time constantly crying for 

 drink to assuage a devouring internal heat. He had also 

 a prodigious desire to sleep. His leg was very strongly 

 tied below and above his knee with a species of ozier, and 

 both foot and leg were horribly swollen, and so was the 

 knee, notwithstanding the ligatures. The worthy father 

 confessed him, but was obliged to hold his hand, and 

 keep moving it, to prevent him from sleeping during the 

 ceremony. He afterwards recovered. 



Captain Forbes, in his highly interestiug book, Da- 

 hoTYiy and the DaJiomans* relates that the natives 

 have an infallible remedy for the bite of the deadly cobra. 

 One of the captain's hammock -men had been bitten three 

 times, but his father was a doctor. Walking one day 

 through some long grass, the captain pointed to the bare 

 legs of his attendant, and hinted at his danger. ' None,' 

 said he; 'my father picks some grass, and if on the 

 same day the decoction is applied, the wound heals at 

 once.' 



This did not seem strange to the captain, who had 

 seen the fights between the cobra and the mongoose, in 

 India. He says that the cobra has always the advantage 



* Longman and Co. 185L 



