CURE FOR SNAKE BITES.
E. F. De Gems, of Moxico, writes the following to the Scientific American : From time to time 1 see in the papers recipes for curing the bites of poisonous snakes, recommended by medical , and other people. In California, where I come from, we have occasion at times to treat animals for the bite of the deadly rattlesnake. I have seen two kinds of herbs used ; one is called in Spanish la /jolondrina (the swallow), growing in the most arid plains ; the other is the rattlesnake weed. ' Both are very effective, but it is not everyone who can tell them, even when at hand. What I know from my own experience to be an infallible cure is the gall of the snake itself. One drop of it on the wound will effect acure, even when inflammation is far advanced. ' I have seen a dog treated whose head had already swollen to twiceits natural size, and it cured himalraosti instantaneously. The gall may be preserved in alcohol, or even f dried, requiting in the latter case only to be moistened ; even saliva alone between two stones will do. ! I have son a case of this kind. If preserved in alcohol, of course, the whole bag of the gall is put into the liquid entire. If true of the rattlesnake, and, as I 'said before, I know it is' infallible from my own experience, it is probably true of all other poisonous snakes, and might it not be true in. the case of the rabies that the gall of , the animal would cure the bite? When at college, in London, the teacher in French, who had been a Spahis 'in Algiers, assured me that the Arabs cured the sting of the scorpion by mashing the scorpion and, applying ib as a poultice on ' the wound« This I have never seen tried, however.' ' i
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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)
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314CURE FOR SNAKE BITES. New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)
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