SNAKE BITE AND ITS ANTIDOTE. 417 
SNAKE BITE AND ITS ANTIDOTE-V. 
EXPERIMENTS WITH CROTALUS VENOM AND REPUTED ANTI¬ 
DOTES, WITH NOTES ON THE SALIVA OF HELODERMA 
(“GILA MONSTER.”) 
By H. C. Yakkow, M.D., Curator Dept. Reptiles, U. S. National Museum. 
{From Forest and Stream.) 
( Continued from page 366.) 
A great number of different plans of treatment have been 
suggested to the writer, and many substances have been sent to 
the National Museum to be experimented with, but in., view of 
the fact that most of the latter were substances of which the pro¬ 
poser would not reveal the identity, no attention was paid to such 
except in one instance, that of a “ mad stone,” or “ snake stone,” 
so-called, the composition of which is reported upon by George 
P. Merrill, Curator of Lithology and Physical Geology, United 
States National Museum. This was sent by Donald MacRae, 
from Wilmington, N. C., and is “ an indurated and impure kaolin 
apparently. Its virtue as a mad stone, doubtless, is due wholly 
to its high absorptive power, which would cause it to adhere to 
the wound for a time, or until saturated.” This is presumably 
the substance which in the United States has so great a reputa¬ 
tion among the common people, when used in cases of snake bite 
or mad dog bite; but it is quite a different thing from what is 
known as the snake stone in India, which is generally found to 
be, on examination, nothing but a piece of calcined deer horn. 
A very interesting account of it is given by Dr. Alfred Ete- 
son, Surgeon-Major, Sappers and Miners, Roorkee, in the Indian 
Medical Gazette , Calcutta, 1876, X., 309. He speaks of having 
received such a stone from a Catholic priest in British Burmah, 
which was simply a flat piece of calcined horn, three-quarters of 
an inch square and one and a half lines thick, and resembled 
a flint, except that all the edges were square and it was very 
smooth, with an even grade of close cancellations clearly visible. 
This stone was one of a number made by another priest for the 
use of the mission fathers. Dr. Eteson had occasion to use this 
stone a short time after in a case of snake bite, and states as fol- 
