100 
ON THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF SEEPENTS. 
ly in its southern parts : at this day, the practice of in- 
cluding the snake in the composition of this medicament is 
only retained in Italy, where the theriac is still made in 
various places. In Sicily it is prepared at Palermo. 
That of Venice is very celebrated : there they use millions 
of the Vipera aspis, which is common in the vicinity of 
that city.^ The great manufacture of theriac which exists 
at Naples, under the protection of the government, is a 
private speculation, at the head of which stands the learn- 
ed Professor Delle Chiaje ; there they use indiscrimi- 
nately every species of serpent, although they prefer the 
vipers named viperiere by the peasants, who bring them 
alive in baskets. M. Siebold assures me that they 
frequently employ a species of theriac in China and 
Japan ; the inhabitants of the Lioukiou "Isles extract 
medicaments from the Hydrophis colubrina ; and at the 
Isle of Banka, the Chinese reckon the bile of the Great 
Python a precious remedy against many diseases.! I pass 
over the use made in the middle ages of different parts 
of the snake, to each of which was attributed salutary 
qualities ; in our days they are wholly laid aside. 
It is only in recent times that those experiments have 
been instituted on the effects of the bites of snakes, which 
we have related elsewhere : the ancients, as many people 
still do, reputed indiscriminately all serpents venomous ; 
they placed the seat of their deadly weapon in the tongue, 
or in the end of the tail, and ascribed to the bite of each 
species, according to their fancy, a different train of mis- 
chiefs.J Civilization is unable to destroy these errors, 
and one is astonished to hear them repeated by well-in- 
formed persons ; to see republished in several works the 
story of the three sons of a colonist, successively dying 
at long intervals, of a wound caused by the fang of a 
rattlesnake remaining in the boot of their father, who 
had first died of the bite : a story which the inhabitants 
of Surinam, as well as those of the United States, are 
* MS. note communicated by the late Dr Michahelles. 
t Olivier, Lund m Zeetogteuy ii. p. 447* 
t See Lucan, Pharsalia, ix. 937 ; Nicander, de heriaca^ 
