APPENDIX. vii 



where nothing more than fear is the cause of very alarming 

 prostration, and in such cases a stimulant would do good ; as 

 where a man has been bitten by a harmless snake, which he 

 believes to be a Cobra. I on«e heard of a man who walking 

 in the dark, trod on one end of a thin coil of tin plate, the other 

 end of which flying up, slightly punctured one of his calves. 

 The impression on the man was, that he had been bitten by a 

 large snake, and an alarming state of prostration supervened, which 

 however was cured by some one going out and finding the cause 

 of the mischief. It cannot, therefore, be too widely known that 

 in the case of snake bite, the sufferer's life is in his own hands, 

 as nothing but instantly sucking the wound, with or without 

 ligaturing it, can prove of the slightest value, all recoveries from 

 snake bite, under treatment, being cases which would probably 

 have recovered no less speedily without it — Dr. Fayrer treats 

 this subject exhaustively in his elegant and valuable work on 

 the Thanatophidia, and recommends such heroic treatment not 

 only as actual cautery with live coals or gunpowder, or the free 

 use of mineral acids after excision of the bite, but even ampu- 

 tation of a limb to save life. Doubtless in the hands of intelli- 

 gent medical men such remedies are not to be altogether con- 

 demned, but to recommend such treatment in general, seems to 

 me to risk subjecting the unhappy sufferer to fruitless agony at 

 the hands of anxious but wholly ignorant friends, without the 

 smallest possible chance of any good resulting from such a course. 

 As for amputation as a suggested remedy, it is to be remembered 

 that a few seconds, 3 to 15 say, suffice for the transmission through 

 the body of the poison, and if a ligature has been applied in 

 time, such a desperate operation is uncalled for, if not, and the 

 poison has entered the system, amputation of a limb, or all four 

 limbs would hardly alter the event. Doctors perhaps are justified 

 in neglecting the Koman rule nee propter vitam vwendi perdere 

 causas, but it is an element that deserves consideration, but on 

 this point a difference of opinion is necessarily to be expected. 

 It is moreover to be regretted, I think, that Dr. Fayrer has rather 

 discountenanced the most efficacious and handy mode of cure 



