RECOVERY FROM A COBRA BITE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5334, 31 October 1885, Page 4

RECOVERY FROM A COBRA BITE.

A remarkable case of cure from the bite of- a cobra in full poison comes from Pachmarhi, a military hill station in the Central Provinces of India. The effective bite of a cobra is usually regarded as certain death, and the successful treatment <f the case in question will suggest to medical'men the possible value of hypodermic treatment in hydrophobia and such like cases. According to the Allahabad -'Pioneer," a Post Office Jiarkara (messenger) was bitten by a cobra, which ■ was afterwards killed. The man was at

once taken to the military hospital, but ten or fifteen minutes must have elapsed before medical assistance was available. When the patient was taken in hand he was in a state of collapse. The lower half of his body became paralysed, and by degrees he lost both speech and sight. The doctor at this stage thought that nothing could save the man, especially as the dead snake had meanwhile been examined and found io be a cobra in full poison. Hypodermic injections and other obvious treatment, however, were continued, and in about ten hours some little imprevement in the patient was observed. Subsequently, the man quite. recovered. There appears not the- slightest doubt about his having been fairly bitten, for, irrespective of the symptoms, .his little finger had been torn open in shaking the snake off. The cobra was four and a half feet long.