THE POISON OF VENOMOUS SERPENTS. 
77 
The medicine used was that prepared by myself, and which was found to operate more sharply than the pills 
sent from Tanjore. 
The safety of the remedy, notwithstanding the large proportion of arsenic, may be inferred from the in¬ 
stances now produced, joined to the much more extensive experience of Mr. Duffin.* Its efficacy, is a matter 
of much more difficult discussion, and so far as respects the canine poison, belongs not to this place. 
SECTION VII. 
Of the Effects of the Poison of Snakes on the Human Body. 
It has been called in question, whether in Europe, the bite of the viper ever proves fatal to man. The Abbe 
Fontana, who was at pains in making inquiry, in different countries, never met with one well attested instance 
of its occasioning death. He found, from his own experiments, that to some even of the domestic brute animals, 
repeated bites of more than one viper did not prove fatal; and he considers the variety of opposite and trifling 
remedies, to which cures have often been ascribed, as a proof that the disease produced by the poison of the 
viper, cannot be very dangerous. “ Une maladie qui cede a tous les remedes, meme a ceux qui sont opposes 
“ entr'eux, n'est jamais une maladie dangereuse.-f- 
The case is widely different in respect to the poisons of the Cobra de Capello, and some other Indian serpents. 
That man is subjected to their deleterious power, is a fact confirmed every year by too many fatal accidents; 
and the experiments produced in the preceding Sections, put it beyond all doubt, that the stronger animals, 
who resist the poison of the viper, rapidly give up life, to the single bite of a Cobra de Capello. 
Of the remedies to which cures of venomous bites are often ascribed in India, some are certainly not less 
frivolous than those employed in Europe for the bite of the viper; yet to infer from thence, that the effects of 
the poison cannot be very dangerous, would not be more rational, than to ascribe the recovery of a person 
bitten by a Cobra de Capello, to the application of a snake-stone, or to the words muttered over the patient by 
a Bramin. 
It is established by experiments on brute animals, that highly deleterious as the poison of serpents is allowed 
to be, it does not to them prove constantly, or infallibly fatal. The case from analogy, may be presumed to 
be the same in respect to man: but is with more certainty known, from the frequent recovery after threatening 
symptoms have come on, not only where insignificant remedies alone were employed, but where no remedy 
whatever had been applied. 
Experiments on brutes serve also to ascertain circumstances, and to discover the causes, of anomalous 
variations remarked in the operation of poison, as they relate either to the state of the snake, or the pre¬ 
disposition of the patient. In respect to the human subject, experience in these variations is, for obvious 
reasons, extremely circumscribed: the snake that inflicted the wound often escapes unknown; and accurate 
histories of the consequent disease are few in number. 
It was matter of surprise, as well as of regret, to find so little known on the medical history of serpents, in a 
country where much might have reasonably been expected. Numbers of stories, it is true, were to be met 
with of the fatal effects, as well as of singular cures, of venomous bites. But such were, in general, related merely 
from memory ; the progress of the disease, and succession of symptoms, had either not been attended to, or 
were indistinctly recollected; the same story told at different times, was found to vary in material circum¬ 
stances ; and the marvellous too often found place in the narrative, 
It is therefore to be wished that the medical gentlemen in India would in future bestow more attention on 
this subject than appears to have been done hitherto; calls upon them, in their professional line, are not fre- 
* For an account of an Indian remedy, for the elephantiasis, of which arsenic is the principal ingredient, see Asiatic Researches, vol. II. 
f Traite sur le Venin de la Vipere, &c. Tome II, p. 32. 
