ANTI- VENOMOUS SERUM AND ITS PREPARATION. 423 



change in the nature of the blood serum, making it capable of 

 entirely destroying the poisonous properties of snake venom. 



Taking advantage of this fact we immunize animals to snake 

 venom to a very high degree, and use their serum for injection 

 into other animals and men bitten by venomous snakes, and 

 thus men and animals may be saved which would otherwise 

 have certainly died. 



When immunizing animals it is distinctly dangerous to 

 attempt to hasten the process, for the animals usually die if 

 injected at too frequent intervals. The greatest care must be 

 taken to see that only absolutely pure venom is used, otherwise 

 septicaemia is likely to supervene and cause the death of the 

 animal. The venom from a dead snake should not be used 

 unless the reptile has been freshly killed, as I have found that 

 the venom in the glands begins to decompose immediately the 

 dead snake gets stale ; and if used for experiments the results 

 are contradictory, for the reason that the animals experimented 

 on sometimes die of septicaemia, and not by the snake venom 

 injected. Those who use snake venom for experimental purposes, 

 or for immunizing animals, or in the treatment of disease in the 

 human subject, should be careful to obtain their venom from 

 living snakes by making them bite into a glass through anti- 

 septic cloth, as outlined and illustrated elsewhere in this book. 



The horses used for the purpose are fed on the very best of 

 foods ; are kept in well-littered, warm stables, and do no manner 

 of work, which is aU the return we can make to them for the 

 blood which they periodically part with for the saving of human 

 lives and the lives of domestic animals. 



Some anti-vivisectionists, I am aware, condemn this practice 

 of immunizing horses for the purpose of preparing an anti- 

 venomous serum ; but should a dearly beloved wife, husband, 

 or child of one of them be bitten by a venomous snake, I do 

 not for one moment doubt but that his or her conscientious 

 scruples would instantly vanish. If such a case should arise 

 and anti-venomous serum was deliberately withheld, then I 

 should unhesitatingly denounce the anti-vivisectionist as a 

 murderer if the bitten person died. The anti-vivisectionist 

 movement is a good and useful one, for it acts as a check on 

 the tendency to inflict torture on animals in the name of science 

 when no purpose calculated to be of lasting benefit to human 



