92 
VIPER. 
that the activity of the poison was sufficiently 
proved. Nevertheless its fatal effects are not so 
sudden upon the larger animals, and much seems 
to depend upon the vigour of the creature, the sea- 
son of the year, and the part bitten. When vipers 
were commonly used by the faculty, it is a known 
fact that the persons who were employed to catch 
them were frequently wounded, and that the ap- 
plication they always used was salad oil : with this 
about them they felt secure, and would even suffer 
themselves to be bitten on purpose to prove the 
remedy. The case of William Oliver, related in 
the Philosophical Transactions, is a singular in- 
stance of the reliance which these people placed in 
their oil. This man was a viper-catcher at Bath, 
and is said to have been the first who discovered 
this admirable remedy. On the first of June 1735, 
in the presence of a great number of persons, he 
suffered himself to be bitten by an old black viper, 
upon the wrist and joint of the thumb of the right 
hand; he immediately felt a violent pain, which 
extended from his thumb up his arm, even before 
he could disengage the viper from his hand. In a 
few minutes after he complained of a burning pain 
which trickled up his arm : soon after this his eyes 
watered excessively, and began to look red and 
fierv, and in less than an hour he felt the venom 
reach his heart, where it caused a pricking pain at- 
tended with faintness, shortness of breath, and cold 
sweats: these alarming symptoms were succeeded 
by a swelling of the belly, with intense gripings 
