534 
CHARLES H. DUNCAN. 
all undertakers and embalmers suck a wound when injured in 
working around the cadaver. In the medical school at Philadel¬ 
phia, we were told by Dr. Weaver to suck any accidental wound 
we might receive in dissecting, and the writer well remembers 
Dr. Willard Cottrell, upon receiving a scratch on the ear, went 
around trying to get some one to suck his ear. Sucking a wound 
appears to be an almost universal custom and wounds do heal un¬ 
der this treatment, and yet we physicians have never recognized 
it.* 
I would suggest here, as a point of investigation as to 
whether the universal custom of sucking the snake bite when pos¬ 
sible, the efficacy is due (as has been supposed) alone to the suck¬ 
ing out of the poison, or whether the Biers’ hyperemic treatment 
that is usually applied has any effect. Not every person bitten by 
a poisonous snake dies; not every person is bitten in such a place 
where he can get it in his mouth The question as to whether 
those bitten in the range of the mouth show a larger percentage 
of recovery than those bitten out of range of the mouth, might 
prove of great value. It might be said that the action of the 
snake venom is so rapid there is not time for the development of 
the specific antibodies. Nature usually compensates and it may 
be the development of antibodies is also rapid and the Biers’ 
hyperemic treatment that is usually applied may give them an 
opportunity to develop before the poison gets into the general 
circulation. 
Again, let us remember we get action from the heterologous 
virus of the rattlesnake, viper and lachesis and hooked adder, 
where dilutions are given by the mouth and believe in giving a 
low potency or crude material, we would also get action by the 
mouth. 
I ask myself the question, have I ever aborted tetanus in my 
minor dispensary cases by putting the wound of the patient in his 
mouth? The tetanus bacillus, we know, thrives in the alimen¬ 
tary canal of the horse and other animals. Have the dog catch- 
* The writer would like to have it distinctly understood, that he offers the above 
observations on hydrophobia only as clinical observation, and clinical observations are 
liable to be misleading till they have been abundantly verified. 
