Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

Dr. Weir Mitchel approves of carbolic acid so far as to recommend every backwoodsman to supply himself with a little of it, which is easily portable and manageable in capillary tubes. In several of his experiments with crotalus venom, carbolic acid applied to the wound was attended with success. But it must be done at once. The whole secret of cures—when cures can be effected at all—lies in promptness. It is celerity on the part of the Indians which ensures their success. In an instant, if his comrade be bitten, the savage is on his knees, sucking the wound, grasping the limb firmly, or strapping it tightly above and below the bite, knowing quite well the importance of checking the circulation. He has his ‘poison pills,’ and tobacco in his pouch. He explodes gunpowder on the wound and loses not an instant. Nor does the victim lose heart. He submits with courage and confidence, and in these lie another element of success. Many cases are on record of persons being at death’s door through fear alone, when bitten by a harmless snake, but recovering on being assured that there was no danger. And other cases are well known where bitten persons have died of fright and the depressing influences surrounding the accident, when they might possibly have recovered.

And assuredly the remedies are generally so severe as to be in themselves sufficiently terrifying. ‘No time for reflection;’ ‘no mercy must be shown,’ declares Sir Joseph Fayrer, in describing the incredible rapidity with which the venom inoculates the blood ‘in a moment of time.’ Where a deep wound has been inflicted by a highly venomous snake on a small animal, death has been known to occur in a few seconds, especially if the bite were on a large vein or an artery. Therefore if the bite be on a limb, to tie a ligature is the first thing to be done. A thong of leather, a tape, a string, a cord, a garment torn in shreds, anything that can be caught up, must at once be tied round the limb. Every instant of delay increases the danger. Incredible force must be used to tighten the ligature, which even with a tourniquet or a stick to twist the cord to the utmost is scarcely sufficient to completely stop the circulation in the fleshy part of a limb. So tight as to cut into the flesh is frequently necessary. In the case of a dog whose hind leg had been bitten, such amazing force was required, in one of Fayrer’s experiments, that with the strength of a pair of hands it was almost impossible to tighten the ligature sufficiently to effect complete strangulation. In another of his experiments a chicken had a ligature tightened round its thigh ‘with the greatest amount of tension that a man’s hand could exert.’ The poor chicken (already half dead with terror and pain, as one must conjecture) was then bitten below the ligature by a cobra, but in spite of the thorough strangulation of the limb, the fowl showed signs of poison in twenty-three minutes, and in three-quarters of an hour was dead. These two among other cases are cited to show that the mere tying of a tape or a pocket handkerchief round a bitten limb is of very little use, provided it is not drawn tight enough to almost cut into the flesh. Yet this is only the first step; for if assistants are at hand, let them tie a second or even a third such ligature above and below the bite when possible, while whoever is best able to operate must scarify the wound by cutting it across deeply, or by immediately cupping, letting it bleed freely; ‘better still,’ says Sir Joseph, ‘cut it out deeply and quickly.’ In the case of a finger or a toe, ‘amputate instantly; for if once the venom is absorbed into the system, there is but the slenderest chance of life.’ If the wound be in a fleshy part, force a red-hot iron to the very bottom of it, and burn it out to the depth of half an inch, or when excised fill it with gunpowder and explode that, or force a live coal into it, or burn it out with carbolic or nitric acid! Agonizing though the remedies be, they are inevitable, should the bite be inflicted by one of the larger and deadlier snakes in a part where absorption is rapid. ‘Do not relax the ligament till the part be cold and livid,’ adds Fayrer.

Nor, when we look at the effects of a bite, can we wonder at the severity of the remedies.

‘Vomiting black fluid,’ ‘bleeding at every orifice of the body,’ are among the horrible sufferings at the time; an injured constitution and hideous sores likely to break out afresh periodically in various parts, may be some of the after consequences should the patient recover.

As the effect of the bite is depressing, the system must be kept up with strong stimulants. Food is of little use, because the functions are too feeble to digest it. But great faith is placed in stimulants. Hence the popularity of ammonia, which is quickly diffusible. The venom exhausts the vital forces; therefore, excepting in the local surgical treatment, all the best remedies are volatile and alcoholic stimulants. Ammonia in the form of eau de luce has long been approved, both taken internally and rubbed into the wound. Professor Halford’s plan of subcutaneously injecting it has been very successful in some cases of Australian snake-bites, and the popularity of this mode has been seen in the large number of hypodermic syringes purchased by persons in the bush. But the use of these requires surgical skill; and awkward attempts by the laity have produced wounds which have been prejudicial to the originator; for though it is said that some attempts of this kind were made by Fontana about one hundred years ago, Halford could not have been aware of that, since he claims to be the first who ventured to throw ammonia directly into the blood. ‘Previously to my experiments in 1868,’ he says, ‘it had never been thought possible to throw ten or twenty minims of the strongest liquid ammonia directly into the veins without killing the man on the spot.’[145] He first tried it on animals, and finding it successful, at length ventured this ‘mode of treatment’ with human beings; since which other doctors in Australia have also practised it. Still he does not claim for it infallibility, though giving some cases in which the action of ammonia on the blood and on the heart’s action produced rapid recovery in persons apparently dying.

Any technical explanation must not be attempted by me; but those who are interested in this subject will find Prof. Halford’s own accounts in the Medical Times for 1873 and ensuing years, also in his paper ‘On the Condition of the Blood from Snake-bite,’ 1867.

In India similar kinds of experiments were not attended with success; leading to the conclusion that the Indian snakes were more deadly than those in Australia. Climate, latitude, season, and many other circumstances affect the virulence of snakes, as we may here repeat. The ‘Brown’ or ‘Tiger snake’ (Hoplocephalus curtus), the ‘Black snake’ (Pseudechis porphyriacus), Hoplocephalus superbus, and some other of the larger venomous kinds within the tropics are thought to be equal in virulence to the Indian ones of the same bulk in the same season. Many of them erect themselves and distend their necks like the najas.

And now for a few words about the most popular and perhaps most attainable of all remedies—alcohol! No wonder the backwoodsman resorts to this, which without any chopping off of fingers or toes, or personal pyrotechnics, or other local tortures, deadens his sensibilities, renders him unconscious of suffering, and sends him into a happy obliviousness of danger. It is not a refined mode of treatment, nor one that presents many opportunities of exhibiting professional skill; and it is no doubt somewhat derogatory to admit that to become dead drunk is an effective victory against snake venom! Other old and inelegant remedies we hear of as practised by the Bushmen of South Africa, and savage tribes elsewhere, but revolting in the hands of refined practitioners. Deference to science and loyalty to the profession demand some more elaborate means. Yet the efficacy of whisky or brandy is admitted by all, and the pioneer who has not a doctor within miles of him has his demijohn of whisky at hand.