The conversation now turned upon the subject of snake-bites and their cure. "My father," said Harold, "had two negroes bitten during one summer by highland moccasins, and each was cured by a very simple remedy. In the first case the accident happened near the house, and my father was in the field. He sent a runner home for a pint bottle of sweet oil, and made him drink by little and little the whole. Beside this there was nothing done, and the negro recovered. The other case was more singular. Father was absent, and there was no oil to be had, but the overseer cured the fellow with chickens."
"Chickens!" exclaimed Mary, laughing. "Did he make him take them the same way?"
"Not exactly," Harold answered; "he used them as a sort of poultice. He ordered a number of half grown fowls to be split open alive, by cutting them through the back, and applied them warm to the wound. Before the first chicken was cold, he applied another, and another, until he had used a dozen. He said that the warm entrails sucked out the poison. Whether or not this was the true reason, the negro became immediately better; and it was surprising to see how green the inside of the first few chickens looked, after they had lain for a little while on the wound."
"We also had a negro bitten by a ground rattle," said Robert, "and father cured him by using hartshorn and brandy, together with an empty bottle."
Harold looked rather surprised to hear of the empty bottle, and Robert said, "O, that was used only as a cupping-glass. Hot water was poured in, and then poured out, and as the air within cooled, it made the bottle suck very strongly on the wound, to which it was applied, and which father had opened more widely by his lancet. While this operation was going on, father made the fellow drink brandy enough to intoxicate him, saying that this was the only occasion in which he thought it was right to make a person drunk. The hartshorn, by-the-by, was used on another occasion, when there was neither a bottle nor spirit to be had. It was applied freely to the wound itself, and also administered by a quarter of a teaspoonful at a time in water, until the person had taken six or eight doses. I recollect hearing father say that all animal poisons are regarded as intense acids, for which the best antidotes are alkalies, such as hartshorn, soda saleratus, and even strong lye."
"Last year," said Harold, "I was myself bitten by a water-moccasin. I was far from home, and had no one to help me; but I succeeded in curing myself, without help."
"Indeed! how was it?"
"I had gone to a mill-pond to bathe, and was in the act of leaping into the water, when I trod upon one that lay asleep at the water's edge. Although it is more than a year since, I have the feeling under my foot at this moment as he twisted over and struck me. Fortunately his fangs did not sink very deep, but there was a gash at the joint of my great toe, of at least half an inch long. I knew in a moment that I was bitten, and as quickly recollected hearing old Torgah say, that the Indian cure for a bite is to lay upon the wound the liver of the snake that makes it. But I suppose that my snake had no notion of being made into a poultice for his own bite; for though I chased him, and tried hard to get his liver, he ran under a log and escaped. Very likely if I had succeeded in killing him, I might have relied upon the Indian cure and been disappointed. As it was, I jumped into the water, washed out the poison as thoroughly as possible, and having made my foot perfectly clean, I sucked the wound until the blood ceased to flow."
"And did not the poison make you at all sick?"
"Not in the least. My foot swelled a little, and at first stung a great deal. But that was the end of it. I was careful to swallow none of the blood, and to wash my mouth well after the sucking."