MODERN SNAKE MEDICINE.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13372, 28 September 1936, Page 2

MODERN SNAKE MEDICINE.

On his recent African trip, said Mr Justice Ostler in an address* to the Wades to vvn and Highland Park Men’s Society. Wellington, he came, across a snake farm where the owner had perfected an anti-snake bite serum guaranteed to be 100 per cent, cure. - This man, realising that some of the vemun of the twenty or more venomous, and some very \en,omous snakes was alkali vomon and some a<t*id, had conceived the idea, of mingling the vembn of all these snakes when compounding his serum. This ho injected in increasing doses into a few old horses he kept for the purpose until they could almost istand any form of bite, and from them ho drew the foundations for the serum. A boy who had worked on the “farm” had been bitten nineteen times, but the serum had saved him. On one occasion a small native lad had brought throe consecutive bags of highly venomous snakes, which he welcomed, as he needed many to “milk” when preparing his serum. Mis curiosity aroused by finding in the bag one peculiarly marked snake, he went at once to see if the snake with the same marking was still on the “farm.” When he found it was not, ho- realised that this youthful burglar, who had sold him back his own snakes so repeatedly, must have come in at night and taken the highly poisonous reptiles running a tremendous risk for a few shillings.