“On admission the following symptoms were observed: The patient did not reply to questions put to her, the eyelids remained closed, and the teeth clenched. On the right shoulder, a little on the inner side of the deltoid prominence, two or three punctures were distinguishable, marked by a small spot of coagulated blood. The respiration was normal, but the pulse was feeble and thready. When a pledget impregnated with ammonia was held under her nose the woman reacted, but immediately relapsed into the soporose condition.
“Two doses of antivenomous serum were at once injected, one in each flank: the patient seemed scarcely to feel the insertion of the needle. The wound on the shoulder was then washed with a fresh solution of hypochlorite of calcium, 1 in 60, and six injections, each of 1 gramme, of the same solution were given round the wound. The latter was covered with a pad of cotton-wool saturated with the solution, and two more doses of serum were injected into the flanks. As the result of this treatment, which altogether took nearly half an hour, the woman began to unclench her teeth, and to respond to her name. She was made to swallow a few mouthfuls of very hot black coffee. A little later she resisted when a fresh injection of serum was about to be given her. After having taken a second cup of coffee she sat up, opened her eyes, and recognised those about her. She immediately asked to go home, but was detained for some time longer. After being carried from the operating table to a bed, she was wrapped in a blanket; a few minutes later profuse perspiration set in, and the patient felt so well that she was allowed to go.
“On the following day the husband came to thank us, and stated that his wife had quite recovered, and that, while she had been unable to sleep for the remainder of the night, it was rather from fear caused by what had happened than in consequence of the pain.”
Case II.—We feel it our duty to relate in detail the following case, having regard to the peculiar circumstances under which it took place.
Coupin, the son of Ponnin, aged 25, living at Carouvadicoupom, near Pondicherry, is a snake-charmer, and one of those who regularly supply us with venom. In the course of July, 1902, this man pointed out to us a shrub[169] growing in one of the alleys of the hospital, to which he attributed so marvellous a power against the bites of poisonous snakes, that he offered to make a cobra bite him in our presence, little as we showed any desire to witness such an exhibition. We allowed him to talk, not wishing to encourage such an act of bravado.
However, on July 23 he returned to the charge, and, as we were leaving the hospital accompanied by our colleagues, he showed us a cobra which he had just caught, and declared himself ready to carry out the proposed experiment there and then. In the face of so much confidence and sang-froid, and, apart from this, being interested in learning the justification for the reputation for immunity possessed by Hindu snake-charmers, we thought we ought not to oppose this voluntary test.
Coupin then turned out from the chatty in which it was imprisoned a medium-sized cobra, and amused himself for a few moments by teasing it. Irritated by this sport, the snake reared itself up, hissed, and struck at its aggressor several times, as though it would bite him; but, at each dart, Coupin stopped it with his hand and gaze, and the snake remained fascinated, with open mouth, hesitating to drive home its fangs. At one moment the snake even crawled up to the native’s outstretched hand, and appeared to lick it: it was evident that the animal’s only intention was to defend itself, not to attack.
Coupin, however, was bent on getting bitten, and, by dint of exciting the snake, the latter became so exasperated that, with hood dilated, it struck at the snake-charmer’s right hand and drove in its fangs. The man quietly raised his arm, to allow it to be clearly seen that the cobra had a firm hold; then, forcing the animal to let go, he came to us to prove that he was really bitten. There were two bleeding spots, 6 millimetres apart, in the centre of the fourth intermetacarpal space of the right hand. The time was exactly 4.40 p.m.
The snake, which was immediately killed, was still able to yield twelve drops of venom, when lateral pressure was applied to its glands.
Coupin walked towards a shrub of the kind mentioned above, which he had planted that very morning in the courtyard of the hospital,[170] plucked some leaves from it and began to chew them, making rather a wry face, for he said that they were very bitter. He then seemed to meditate for a few moments before the shrub. We asked him whether he was afraid, but he stoutly denied it, declaring that this was not his first experience, and that indeed he had been bitten by cobras so often that he could not remember the first occasion. We endeavoured to discover whether he was not rendered immune, as Indian snake-charmers are reputed to be, by inoculating themselves subcutaneously with increasing doses of venom, according to a principle to a certain extent analagous to that on which the preparation of antivenomous serum is based. He, however, assured us that he knew nothing about such practices, and that the properties of the plant in question had always sufficed to cure him without other treatment. Such was his confidence in his specific that, before the cobra was killed, he suggested to our hospital-warder that he should allow himself to be bitten in his turn, in order to render the experiment still more conclusive, adding that his own assistant would be the subject at the next demonstration.