274 Uvularia perfoliata as a remedy for Poisoned Wounds. 



powers of nature, the facts which have occurred or been commu- 

 nicated to me, tend strongly to prove the correctness of the posi- 

 tion, that death rarely, if ever, takes place from the direst effects 

 of the bite in human adults. Thus, that which is ascertained by 

 Fontana with so much labor in regard to the viper, and rendered 

 so probable by Russell, as to the cobra de capello and other cele- 

 brated Indian serpents, seems likely to be also established in re- 

 gard to our rattlesnakes. This would hardly have been expected 

 from a comparison made by the last named author, who states 

 that a rattlesnake in London killed a dog in two minutes ; while 

 the shortest period of time in which Dr. R. was able to produce 

 that effect by his strongest cobras, was thirteen minutes, or a pe- 

 riod six and a half times as long. Of our ten or twelve venomous 

 serpents, it secixis generally conceded, that the most powerful are 

 the different species of Crotalus. Of these. Dr. M'Connell, of 

 Mauch Chunk, communicated to me eleven years since, that he 

 had then attended no less than seventeen bites ; not one of which 

 had proved fatal. Since that period, the Crotali have become less 

 numerous in the vicinity, from the increase of population. Dr. 

 M'C has however, within his momentary recollection, seen three 

 or four more, and has never seen a death. Similar results were 

 met with at Pottsville, by Dr. Halberstadt ; and the popular re- 

 collections I heard came to the same account, with the exception 

 of one statement, of which I did not learn the details, that a man 

 had some time previously died in two minutes, of a bite. Most 

 probably, in this last case, the poison was instilled into a vein. I 

 observe, that Mr. Daudin alledges that this venom is extremely for- 

 midable in the south, but that its terrors are singularly exaggera- 

 ted in the north. That the exaggeration may also be found in 

 another latitude, may be alledged upon the authority of our dis- 

 tinguished countryman, Dr. Holbrook ; as whose opinion I am 

 authorized to state, that the poison of the rattlesnake is mortal to 

 animals of the size of its prey ; but very rarely, if ever, to man. 

 To observations so extensive as those of the gentlemen I have 

 named, the addition of two more cases could only be worth ma- 

 king, from a desire to enlarge as far as possible the number of 

 cases from which inferences are to be drawn. I have seen two 

 such out of Philadelphia,* and both recovered. 



* After the above had been read to the Academy, William Hembel, Esq., fa- 

 vored me with a communication of so much interest, that, coining as it did from two 



