AN INFALLIBLE SNAKE-BITE REMEDY.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume IX, Issue 26, 26 November 1903, Page 2

AN INFALLIBLE SNAKE-BITE REMEDY.

It has teanspired that the " infallible remedy ” used by “ Brusher ” Mills, the well-known Gew

Forest snake-catcher, for the bite of the adder or viper, is the fat of the creature itself melted, bottled, and applied a drop at a time to the wound. The cure, he asserts is an affair of two minutes.

Mills has, of course, had immense experience with snakes, having in his day, killed or taken more than 4,000 venomous and 27,000 harmless specimens. The question is whether his treatment is merely a survival of the old savage homoeopathy which ordains the hair of the dog that bit you as a cure for a bite, or whether it is a rude form of serum treatment.

Vipers are exceedingly quarrelsome from tl# moment they break the egg, and unless immune against pen Ufa would long ago have ceased

the exist as a distinct species. Hence their fat may be a kind of antitoxin. Of course all fatty and oily substances are useful against poisons which they doubtless absorb and isolate. The old-fashioned

“London viper catchers, ’’ mentioned by White, of Selborne, and others always employed hot oil as a cure or treatment for snak<*-bite, and, as the ‘Lancet’ remarks, this with ammonia continues to be recommended. Fat was anciently used to frighten away serpants from gardens and houses.