INTRODUCTION. 
THE subject treated in this work has occupied the author’s 
attention and study for many years. When quite young he wit- 
nessed the excruciating torments suffered by a person bitten by a 
rattlesnake, and the question suggested itself to his mind, Can it 
be possible that such a deadly poison exists in nature without an 
antidote existing somewhere near it at the same time? 
In Bible history,* when the Israelites, journeying from Mount 
Hor by the way of the Red Sea, were visited by the plague of 
“numberless fiery serpents,” Moses, at God’s command, caused to 
be made “a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came 
to pass that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the 
serpent of brass he lived.” This seems to indicate that the anti- 
dote to the poison lies in the snake itself. Following up this idea 
leads us to the bile or gall as the object of our search. 
Experiments prove that its efficacy as an antidote is beyond 
dispute. A very great number of cures of snake-bites made by 
preparations of snake-galls place a seal upon the value of this 
discovery. 
The Author makes no claim to literary merit in this work, but 
it is given to the public with the hope that the student may find 
* Numbers, Chapter X XI. 
