ANTIDOTES. 195 
diminish gradually, and disappear entirely in from twelve to 
eighteen or twenty days. 
During the period of inoculation great care must be taken 
not to wet any part of the body, and the Curers only allow 
drinks of boiled water, cooled and sweetened. 
This period of prophylactic inception may be fixed at 
twenty days in a tropical climate, although in different cli- 
mates its length must undoubtedly vary, and can only be 
determined by repeated experiments. 
The dogs I inoculated in the town of Norosi would, after 
inoculation, tear any of the most venomous snakes in pieces, 
and if bitten, appeared to suffer little or no inconvenience 
from the bite, which healed of itself in three or four days ; 
not one of them has, however, been killed by a snake-bite, 
when previously almost every dog bitten by a snake died. 
I inoculated myself, by making incisions in the lower 
extremity of each deltoid muscle, with a preparation of the 
gall of the Lachesis, (B. Lach. one-tenth, or one drop of 
pure gall to ten drops of 95 per cent. alcohol.) The symp- 
toms experienced were fugitive pains of different degrees of 
intensity in different parts of the head; slight epistaxis; 
adipsia; anorexia; dysury; diarrhcea,* which lasted four 
days; rheumatic pains in joints and limbs; cough, soreness 
of the throat, accompanied with painful deglutition ; accesses 
of erotism ; great debility of body and mind; vertigo; pale- 
ness of face and skin, and inclination to fainting fits at times. 
These symptoms diminished in intensity after six or eight 
days by intermissions, and finally ceased one by one, till after 
twenty days all that remained was a strange taste of the 
leaves of a plant (Arist. Col.) upon the tongue, which was 
noticeable for more than a month afterwards. 
* For fifteen days previously I had been much constipated. 
