10 PREFATORY. 
and no data retained, except in memory, which can be given in 
proof of what is herein asserted. 
After having cured nearly fifty persons bitten, and at the in- 
stance of several friends in South America, he was persuaded to 
publish a small work in Spanish, intended to give some general 
notions about Ophidians, a list of antidotes, and the “secret 
methods of cure” used by the Curers, &c., &c., intended as a 
manual, and containing the method of preparation of the galls, 
and such simple directions about their administration as could be 
comprehended clearly by every person of the lowest mental ca- 
pacity, and which would enable such a person to treat any case 
of snake-bite without hesitation. A continued and further study 
of the subject, and a desire to extend his field of labors in this 
sense, led to his placing his discoveries at the disposition of the 
British Government. 
Further studies and researches made at the great library of 
the British Museum, that greatest of all the storehouses of scien- 
tific lore in the world, have given the subject the form in which 
it is here presented to the public. No one is more fully sensible 
than himself of its imperfections. His desire was to have made 
the study exhaustive, and to this end further studies will be prose- 
cuted, which he hopes at some future time may be received by 
those who take any interest in the subject with the same leniency 
he asks for this humble literary effort, made with the hope that 
it may not be devoid of value to science. 
