SNAKE VENOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 193, 15 August 1936, Page 6

SNAKE VENOM.

AiMTI-TOXSN VALUE.

EVER-GROWING MEDIC AE DEMAND. MANY REPTILE "FARMS." Amongst many remarkable advancements which medicine and surgery have seen during the last few decades, none are more astonishing than those associated with, snake venom. Since the dawn of man, serpents, venomous and otherwise, have been regarded with nothing but aversion and dread.

Recently, however, medical men have realised that snake venom may be converted into an anti-toxin whereby some of the world's most deadly reptiles have been made the instruments of healing as well as death, writes E. G. Boulenger, in the London "Observer."

During the past year the coagulant properties of snake venom, which usually lead to the victim's demise, have been more closely investigated and their potentialities utilised in combating that most baflling of ailments—haemophilia.

Snakes "Milked." In the autumn of last year, Dr. Burgess Barnett, the curator of reptiles at the London Zoo, and Dr. R. G. Macfarlane, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, made known their initial success in this new use for snake venom, and to-day steady progress is being made not only in this direction, but hopes are now entertained for the use of snake venom extracts in curing or at least allaying certain nervous disorders such as epilepsy. As a result, venomous snakes at the London Zoo are regularly "milked" for the venom secreted in their poison glands and the deadly _ fluid converted into life-saving anti-toxins.

t The snakes available in even the best stocked zoo, are, however, quite inadequate to meet the ever-growing demand for the venom, and as a result snake parks are springing up all over the world where venomous snakes abound. Such parks originated some years ago when the preparation of anti-snake venom was recognised as a working possibility.

/ The first such park was that at Tela in Honduras, and another and much larger of long standing is the one at Sao Paulo, Brazil, under the direction of Dr. Amaral. Another park has been established under Mr. Fitzsimons at Port Elizabeth in South Africa, whilst this year's recruit to the movement is a park controlled by the Haffkine Serum Institute of Bombay.

It is now known that the properties of snake venoms vary enormously according to the speCies, and therefore it is vital that every country abounding in deadly reptiles should have an institute and park devoted to its local snakes. Thus the Sao Paulo Institute deals chiefly with the rattlesnake, the Fer-de-Lance and the Bushmaster, that of Bombay with the krait and the cobra, while South Africa is chiefly concerned with the cobra, puff adder, and the notorious Mamba.

Snake parks to-day are fast being assessed at their trtie value, not as mere show sights for the curious, but as vital factors in the armoury of medicine.

The general layout of a snake park consists of a large enclosure surrounded by a moat filled with water and dotted with concrete shelters for the snakes. At the Port Elizabeth Park, which may be taken as a typical example, over a thousand snakes pass through annually, and the majority of these are venomous.

Courageous Keeper. Johannes, the famous Basuto keeper of this institution, has been bitten on innumerable occasions. In his 15 years of office he has been all but killed 16 times, and on one occasion rendered blind for-a month by a spitting cobra. Familiarity with his fearsome charges appears to have bred in Johannes a mild contempt. He periodically sifts the mud in the surrounding moat for the coins flung at him by visitors which frequently go wide. To the attendant the moat is a form of gold mine or savings bank.

"The traffic in snakes lias thus been created by the demand'of medicine. The Pbrt Elizabeth Park, for example, has a regular tariff, paying according to species and size, and all poisonous snakes brought in are accepted by the authorities. 0 So well known is the park's generous payment for creatures otherwise of little value to the finders that the authorities ale frequently imposed upon, and have actually been burgled 011 several occasions.

Incredible as it may seem, men, both black, and white, will break into the park at night, purloin the deadly reptiles under cover of darkness, and then, by morning light, offer them as new arrivals" to the authorities. Since it is not possible to mark snakes like birds, or even fish, such malefactors can only be brought to book if caught redhanded. Although the Kaffir boys are the chief offenders, the hero of the rogues' galleyy is a young European. In six months he stole scores of boomslangs, deadly {irboreal snakes which he disentangled from their roosts in a dense shrubbery. He worked in pitch darkness, and had his hands and feet bare, despite the fact that the ground* was littered with puff adders. He was sentenced to a month's imprisonment, but, as the director admits, he merited the Victoria Cross rather than the punishment tfiat was meted out to him.