n8 CURES FOR SNAKE-BITE 



order a supply as soon as it is to be had, and con- 

 scientiously try to stamp out the smouldering hope 

 within him that somebody in the station will soon 

 be bitten by a cobra and give him a chance. 



Among the dusky millions of India Dr. Fraser's 

 discovery will create no " catholic ravishment" 

 because they will not hear of it. And if they 

 did hear of it they would regard his labours as 

 misapplied and the result as superfluous. For the 

 Hindu has never shared the Englishman's opinion 

 that there is no cure for snake-bite. On the con- 

 trary, he is assured that there are not one or two 

 but many specifics for the bite of every kind of 

 snake, known to those whose business it is to know 

 them. If they are not invariably efficacious, it is 

 for the simple reason that if a man's time has come 

 to die he will die. But if his time has not come to 

 die they will not fail to cure him, and since no man 

 can know when he is bitten whether his time has 

 come or not, he will lay the odds against Fate by 

 trying, not one or another of them, but as many as 

 he can hear of or get. Some of them are drastic 

 in their effects, and so it too often proves that the 

 poor man's time has indeed come, for though he 

 might survive the snake he succumbs to the cure. 



It is many years now since the news was brought 

 to me one day that a man whom I knew very well 

 had been bitten by a deadly serpent and was dying. 

 He was a fine, strongly built young fellow, a Moham- 

 medan, in the employ of a Parsee liquor distiller, 



