"70 VIl'ERA HERUS. 



cold perspiration, vertigo, and injury of the mental faculties. These 

 symptoms are sometimes attended with an universal yellowness of 

 the skin, and an excruciating pain about the navel. 



The first step to be taken after receiving the bite of a Viper, is 

 to apply a ligature very tight around the wounded limb, above the 

 bitten part. Sucking out the poison from the wound, the appli- 

 cation of caustics, and scarifying the parts already swollen, that the 

 effused serum may escape, and the matter be discharged as soon 

 as it is formed, arc the means that have been recommended by 

 most modern writers. Sir Astley Cooper, in lecturing upon com- 

 parative anatomy, was exhibiting to his pupils the effect of cold 

 artificially produced upon a Viper. He held the animal in his 

 hand, stiff, and apparently lifeless ; but while engaged in explaining 

 the subject, the warmth of his hand revived the benumbed powers 

 of the Viper, who erected his head and bit him upon the hand. 

 Mr. Fox, the dentist, being present, instantly applied a ligature 

 around the wrist, and no other symptoms occurred than a slight 

 blackening of the back of the hand, from an effusion of blood 

 under the skin. Olive oil, externally applied, was formerly ex- 

 tolled as a remedy, but the numerous trials of that medicine, in 

 • France, by Hunaud and Geoffroy, have robbed it of all its celebrity. 

 The internal remedies consist of powerful diaphoretics and stimu- 

 lants, particularly ammonia. From fifteen to twenty drops of 

 sal volatile may be taken every two hours, in a cup of warm whey, 

 the patient remaining in bed warmly covered, and every means 

 taken to produce and encourage perspiration. By these means 

 the poison will, in the first instance, be prevented from entering 

 the circulation, or its noxious qualities destroyed by the chemical 

 action of the caustic ; and, lastly, the effects of the poison that 

 has entered the constitution will be counteracted. 



Medical Properties and Uses. — The flesh of the Viper was 

 formerly held in high estimation as a restorative. " This idea," 

 says Dr. Shaw, " seems to have originated from the animal casting 

 its skin, like other snakes, and thus appearing as it were in a state 

 of renovated youth ; and the snake being made the emblem of 

 health, and consecrated to Esculapius, must have depended on the 

 same idea. The ancients used the flesh of the viper in leprous and 



