520 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NA TURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XL 



to confer upon him the power of healing by suction the bites of the 

 most venomous snakes."* 



Superstition and mystification play, it is seen, a very great part in 

 this preventive treatment which the Curados de Culebras of Central 

 America undergo, but it is not surprising that — thanks to these succes- 

 sive inoculations — they succeed in attaining an immunity sufficient to 

 preserve them from the ordinary bites of snakes. Can it be that the 

 snake-charmers of Egypt, of Tunis, and certain classes in India possess 

 secrets of the same kind ? The fact appears to me in any case very 

 probable. 



M. d'Abbadie recently communicated to the Academie des Sciences 

 (24th February, 1896) a note by Colonel Serpa Pinto relative to an- 

 other method of vaccination used by the natives of Mozambique, and 

 to which the Colonel himself submitted : — 



i( It was at Inhambane (east coast of Africa) amongst the Vatuas 

 that I was vaccinated. 



"They extract the poison of a snake called in Portuguese Alcatifa 

 (carpet); thus named on account of the varieties of colour in its skin 

 which resembles a carpet. I am ignorant of the means employed to 

 obtain the poison. This poison is mixed with vegetable substances 

 and forms with them a very brown sticky paste. They make two 

 parallel incisions in the skin, five millimetres long each, and introduce 

 into them the paste containing the poison. These incisions are made on 

 the arms near the junction of the radius and ulna with the carpal bones, 

 on the back of the hand, on the back, on the shoulder-blades, and on 

 the feet near the great toe. After the operation they exact an oath 

 that the vaccinated man will never kill a venomous snake, because they 

 say that henceforth the snake is his intimate friend, and they throw 

 upon him an Alcatifa snake which does not bite him. When I under- 

 went this operation I was swollen all over for eight days and suffered 

 every imaginable pain. 



" I have never been bitten by any snake and cannot affirm that this 

 remedy is infallible. The Vatuas say that it is, and they never kill a 

 snake. 



"A short time after being vaccinated I was stung in the Seychelles- 

 Islands by a scorpion and felt no pain from it ; ten years later, when 



* Notes by Dr. Jaoelot (" Arcb. de Med- Navale," 1867, p 880). 



