SPIDER BITES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22823, 6 March 1936, Page 8

SPIDER BITES

TREATMENT WITH SERUM TAKEN FROM BITTEN PERSONS (Fbom Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, February 27. Greater success in the treatment of bites from the deadly fifnnel-web spider is hoped for from a serum which is now ready for trial at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney. At this hospital recently, two patients were admitted suffering from the effects of bites from such spiders. Both were desperately ill and serum taken from them has been kept and will be used to treat other cases that may come to the hospital. This Sydney development follows tho same lines as research in the United States, where the black widow spider, which is closely related to the Australian red-back spider, is prevalent. Bites from the black widow spider have caused many serious illnesses in America, particularly in California, and lately cases have been treated with convalescent serum obtained from the blood of patients who have been bitten and who have recovered. They have in their blood-stream, presumably, anti-bodies, which to some extent will neutralise the poison of the spider. It has been found in the Sydney investigations that the amount of venom obtainable from the funnel-web spider is so small that it is impossible to collect enough venom, to make artificial anti-venom. The venom must be collected from hundreds of spiders, or the crushed heads containing the poison glands used, and the anti-venom made from this. These methods are being followed in Sydney. The effects of the bite of spiders are not constant, and this adds to the difficulty of the work. In some cases the bite is fatal to laboratory animals; in other cases the animals are scarcely affected. The discrepancy, apparently, is due to the stage of development of the spider. Also, the spiders dug out of the ground in the winter are sleepy and have little venom, compared with those found on top of the ground in late summer. Handling the spiders is extremely delicate work. Some experimentalists in the United States,- in obtaining venom from the black widow, anaesthetise the spider by giving it chloroform; but in Sydney the spiders are handled in thenactive state. According to Mr K. C. MTCeown, assistant entomologist at the Australian Museum, a recent census has shown that there are 1200 .different types of spider in Australia, of which only three are dangerous. Comparatively little research had been carried out, he said, and it was possible that complete investigation would show that there were considerably more than 1200 types. The bite of the funnel-web was much more dangerous than that of the other tvpes. Between 1929 and 1933 it caused'four deaths in Sydney, and there had been several fatal attacks since then.