Among the most absurd of the tales which
rest on the common belief that a mere prick of
a venomed fang may kill, is that of the farmer
who was stung by a snake, which not only slew
him, but left its fang in the fatal boots, which,
falling to his descendants, proved fatal to two
of them also. This story is to be traced to its
original in the "Letters of an American
Farmer," by St. John (de Crèvecœur), where
it loses none of the piquancy of the later
versions.

The reader will by this time understand that
it is impossible the mere wound of the dry fang
could destroy three persons in succession, so
that we may confidently dismiss this tale to the
limbo of other snake stories.

A few words must suffice to tell all we know
as to the proper treatment. There are in
America at least a hundred supposed antidotes,
and in Martinique about as many. It is an old
saying of a wise doctor, that diseases, for which
there are numerous remedies, are either very
mild or very fatal. Taking the mass of cases
of snake-bite in America, few die; and this
is why, as we said before, all means seem good
alike. Tested fairly, where the dose of venom
has been large, they are all alike worthless—
a beautiful subject for the medical statistician.

Looked at with an eye to symptoms, we see
in the first effects of venom a dangerous
depression of all functions, exactly like what
follows an over-dose of tartar emetic. The
obvious treatment is to stimulate the man, and
this is the meaning of whisky for snake-bite—
a remedy, by the way, which enormously
increased the number of snake-bites in the army
on the American frontier. The intensity of the
depression is shown best by the amount of
whisky which may then be taken with impunity.
In one case, a well-known physician of Tamaqua,
Pennsylvania, gave to a child aged two years
a pint of whisky in two hours. A little girl
of nine years old in South Carolina received
thus a pint and a half of whisky in four hours.
Neither patient was made drunk by these doses,
and both recovered.

It is likely that too much whisky is often
given in such cases, since all that is desirable is
to keep the person generally stimulated, and
not to make him drunk. Nor does stimulus
destroy the venom—it only antagonises its
activity, as is best shown by mixing venom with
alcohol, and then injecting the mixture under
the skin, when the subject of the experiment
will die, just as if no alcohol had been used.

As to local treatment, whatever gets the
venom out of the tissues is good. Cross-cut
the wound through the fang-marks, and suck at
it with cups or with the mouth, if you like the
bitten person well enough. Cut the piece out,
if the situation allows of that, or burn it with a
red-hot iron—milder caustics being mostly
valueless. One other measure has real utility.
Tie a broad band around the limb above the
bite, so as to stop the pulse. Now give
whisky enough to strengthen the heart. Let
us then relax the band, and so connect again
the circulation of the bitten part with the
general system. The poison, before in quarantine,
is let loose; the pulse becomes fast and
feeble. We tighten the band, and give more
liquor. The principle is this: You have ten
men to fight, and you open the door wide
enough just to let in one at a time. So much
of the venom as your local treatment leaves in
the tissues has to be admitted to the general
system soon or late; we so arrange as to let it
in a little at a time, and are thus able to fight it
in detail.

Stripped utterly of its popular surroundings,
and told in the plainest language, the mere
scientific story of the venom of the rattlesnake
is full of a horrible fascination, such as to some
degree envelops the history of all poisons. One
would like to know who first among the early
settlers encountered the reptile, and what that
emigrant thought of the original inhabitant.
What they wrote of him soon after is told in
the following quotations, with which we shall
close. They have a peculiar interest, as the
first printed statements about the rattlesnake,
and as giving the earliest expression to certain
fallacies which still retain their hold upon the
popular mind.

From New English Canaan, or New Canaan.
"Written by Thomar Morton, of Clifford's-inn, Gent.
Printed at Amsterdam, 1637.

"There is one creeping beast or longe creeple (as
the name is in Devonshire) that hath a rattle at his
tayle, that does discover his age; for so many
yeares as hee hath lived, so many joynts are in that
rattle, which soundeth (when it is in motion) like
pease in a bladder, & this beast is called a
rattlesnake; but the Salvages give him the name of
Sesick; which some take to be the Adder; & it may
well be so (for the Salvages are significant in their
denomination of anything) & is no lesse hurtful
than the Adder of England & no more. I have had
my dogge venomed with troubling one of these, &
so swelled that I had thought it would have bin his
death; but with one saucer full of salet oyle poured
downe his throate he recovered, & the swelling
assuaged by the next day. The like experiment
hath bin made upon a boy, that hath by chaunce
troad upon one of these, & the boy never the worse.
Therefore it is simplicity in any one that shall tell
a bugbeare tale of horror, or terrible serpents that
are in that land." (p.82.)

From New England's Prospect. By William
Wood. London, 1636.

"That which is most injurious to the person &
life of man is a Rattlesnake, which is generally a
yard & a halfe long, as thick in the middle as the
small of a man's legge; she hath a yellow belly, her
backe being spotted with blacke, russet yellow, &
greene colours placed like scales; at her taile is a
rattle with which shee makes a noyse when shee is
molested, or when shee seeth any approach neere
her; her neck seemes to be no thicker than a man's
thumbe, yet can she swallow a Squerrill, having a
great wide mouth, with teeth as sharpe as needles,
wherewith shee biteth such as tread upon her; her
poyson lyeth in her teeth, for she hath no sting.
When any man is bitten by any one of these
creatures, the poyson spreads so suddenly through the
veins, & so runs to the heart, that in one hour it
causeth death, unlesse he hath the Antidote to