Ot SERPENTS. 105 



fhort and laborious, the pulfe low, quick, and inter- 

 rupted : the woivid, which was at firll: red, becomes 

 livid, black and gangrenous ; the ikin of the wounded 

 limb, and fom ?tinies of the whole body, takes a yel- 

 low hue ; cola fweats and convulfions come on, and 

 the patient links, fometimes in a few hours, but com- 

 monly at the end of two, three, or four days. 



This is the ufual progrefs when the difeafe termi- 

 nates fatally, but happily the patient will moft com- 

 monly recover, a refieciion which ihould moderate the 

 fears of thofe who happen to be bitten by fnakes, and 

 which at any rate Ihould, as much as polhble, be re- 

 filled, as the deprefling paflion of fear will, in all cafes, 

 alfill the operation of the poifon. 



We read in authors that the bite of fome fnakes 

 produces fymptoms peculiar to themfelves*. The afp 

 is faid to produce an univerfal torper and lethargy 

 without pain: for this reafonwe are told, Cleopatra, 

 the celebrated queen of EgyjU, preferred a death in- 

 flicted by the bite of this animal to any other. This 

 is a faft concerning which hiftorians may differ, but 

 it appears certain, from fome cafes related by Captain 

 GowDiE, in Dr. Russel's late fplendid publication, 

 and by other writers, that the bite of ferpents will, in 

 this manner, fometimes produce death. Lucan, in 

 his pharfalia, mentions a variety of ferpents that in- 

 felled the Roman army in its march over the Lybian 

 defart, and he diftinguiihes them by the various fymp- 

 toms they produced. But the dreadful catalogue 

 given by Lucan, fliould rather be confidered as 

 poetical embelliiliments, than hiftorical fa6fs -, and 

 whatever truth may be in this variety of fymptoms, it 

 is infinitely of more importance to know, that the nature 



* Herltinandel, malabarenfium coluber, idlu corrnmpit carne? totins 

 corporis humani, ut putrefcant, decidant, et port mille tormenta, 

 inoriatur vulneratus. Parata taraen huic malo medela eft in Antidefmas 

 decofto aquofo, copioiius haufto, — Amenitat : Acadera : Vol. i, p. iii. 



of 



