ANTIDOTE TO SNAKE-BITE 
125 
thoroughly expectorated, and the mouth cleansed before repeat¬ 
ing the operation. Others suggest burning the bitten part, and 
if this can be effectually carried out at once, there is no reason 
why the poison should not be burnt out also. But this is a 
very painful expedient, liable to meet with strong opposition 
from the patient, before the result can be declared reliable, and 
also difficult to accomplish with the means usually at hand at 
the moment, for where a red-hot poker would effectually burn 
down an inch at the first application, the ordinary wooden fire¬ 
brand one is through circumstances compelled to use in the 
veldt is extinguished time after time before the result can be 
considered satisfactory. Hunters have been known to boldly 
cut the whole bitten part out with a circular sweep of a knife, 
and burn off gunpowder on the wound, declaring this treatment 
to answer well. 
Of course, in any case, a strong ligature, applied tightly 
above the bitten limb to prevent the absorption of poison, 
is at all times advisable. 
Several experiments I made on animals with the bite of 
European and Indian vipers showed that bites were cured 
‘without fail ’ by injecting liquid ammonia through a hypo¬ 
dermic syringe immediately on the bitten parts, into the 
separate marks of each fang. Alcohol, applied locally or 
internally as an antidote, proved perfectly useless, as did also 
caustic potash. But to the details of these experiments I must 
refer the interested reader to a pamphlet published as my dis¬ 
sertation while qualifying in medicine at Berlin in July 1881. 
From information gathered from time to time, I am convinced 
that the action of poison from different kinds of serpents is 
different in its pathological results, and therefore think this is a 
hint that separate remedies may be necessary as antidotes to the 
various bites. The repeated assertion coming from America, 
and now almost amounting to a joke, that whisky is an infallible 
remedy against rattlesnake—crotalus—bite, while in the case of 
vipers it was useless, may perhaps be taken as an argument in 
favour of this statement. 
