ANOTHER INSTANCE. 143 



this state, bordering between life and death, till about the sixth 

 day, when a slow improvement began to manifest itself. From 

 this time onward his condition rapidly improved, and in three 

 weeks he was discharged from the hospital still in a weak, 

 debilitated state, and although he gradually regained strength, he 

 had relapses of slight bleeding from the mucous membranes of 



Fig. 61. — The Boomslang which bit Williams. It died about six months 

 afterwards, and is now pickled in a jar of spirit. 



the mouth, and one eye was occasionally affected. Even three 

 months after the accident, slight discolouration in the tissues 

 surrounding one of his eyes showed itself for a few days. Apart 

 from this, he has otherwise entirely recovered his health and 

 strength. There was no anti-venomous serum available at the 

 time, and consequently the venom exerted its full poisonous 

 properties in Wilhams' body. 



Another Instance. 



Some years ago a local gentleman was bitten by a Boomslang, 

 and died a few days later, but the general belief was, and is, that 

 he died of blood-poisoning consequent upon pricking and irritating 

 the wound with some foreign substance. A well-known gentle- 

 man, who saw him shortly after being bitten, says : " I questioned 

 him as to whether he had experienced any effects from the bite, 

 and he certainly gave me to understand that he had not, and 

 attributed the whole trouble to the rash use of a needle, and 

 making too deep a puncture with it. He told me that he felt 



