MODERN SNAKE MEDICINE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 222, 19 September 1936, Page 9

MODERN SNAKE MEDICINE

MR .JUSTICE OSTLER’S EXPERIENCE WELLINGTON, Sept. 18. I On his recent African trip, said Mr Justice Ostler in an address to the Wadestown and Highland Park Men's Society, he came across a snake farm where the owner had perfected an anti-snake bite serum guaranteed to be a 100 per cent. cure. This man, realising that some of the venom ot the twenty or more venomous, and some very venomous, snakes was alkali venom and some acid, had conceived the idea of mingling the venom of all these snakes when compounding his serum. This he injected in increasing doses into a few old horses he kept for the purpose until they could almost stand any form of bite, and from them he drew the foundations for the serum. A boy who worked on the “farm" had been bitten nineteen times, but the serum had saved him. On one occasion a small native lad had brought him three consecutive bags of highly venomous snakes, which he welcomed, as he needed many to “milk” when preparing his serum. His curiosity aroused by finding in the bag one peculiarly marked snake, he went at once to see if the snake with the same markings was still on the “farm.” When he found it was not, he realised that this youthful burglar, who had sold him back his own snakes so repeatedly, must have come in at night and take# the highly poisonous reptiles, running a tremendous risk for a few shillings.