Stahnke has found that the iced-water treatment (as described in detail in the [scorpion section] of this booklet) is beneficial. The points of puncture should be treated with iodine, the patient kept as quiet as possible, and an ice pack applied or the part submerged in iced-water, and a physician summoned immediately.
Baerg[4] recommends hot baths—as hot as the patient can endure. These should be used only in cases of advanced poisoning, never immediately after the bite is received.
Internal use of alcohol is dangerous, and a person bitten when intoxicated would have much less chance of recovery.
Professional treatment consists mostly in the use of opiates, hydrotherapy, and similar measures to alleviate the acute pain. Of more than 75 different remedies used, three seem to be outstanding as palliatives: spinal puncture, intravenous injections of Epsom salts, and intramuscular administration of convalescent serum when given within 8 hours. Dr. Charles Barton, of Los Angeles, recommends intramuscular or intravenous injection of calcium gluconate, 10 cc. in a 10 per cent solution. The patient should be encouraged to drink as much water as he will. He usually leaves the hospital on the fourth day. Recent experiments with an injection of neostigmine followed by one of atropine have had encouraging results, and the use of ACTH in several cases has had spectacular results, according to Readers’ Digest (Nov. 1951, p. 45).
Control of black widows
Because of their wide distribution and secretive habits, black widows are difficult to control. Basements, outbuildings, and garages should be cleaned frequently, and black widow webs and eggs destroyed. If accessible, the spider may be dislodged from her web with a broom, and smashed. The use of a blowtorch, where there is no fire hazard, is effective for both spiders and egg cocoons. Insect sprays, in general, are ineffectual.
Brown recluse spider
and its venomous relatives
Until recently the black widow was considered the only spider in the United States dangerous to man. In 1955, physicians in Missouri and Arkansas began treating persons suffering from the bite of the brown recluse spider, whose poison caused serious damage to the skin at the site of the puncture and often produced a severe systemic reaction sometimes fatal to young children.
The spider is approximately ⁵/₁₆ inch in length, dark brown to fawn, with long legs. A violin-shaped spot on the upper side of the cephalothorax (head portion) is the only noticeable identification giving rise to another common name—fiddleback spider. It is also known as brown spider, or brown house spider.
Little has been published on its life history, but it has been reported from Kansas, Illinois, the Gulf Coast, and from Tennessee to Oklahoma. It is extending its territory westward and has recently been reported from southeastern New Mexico and southern California. People are contributing to the rapid geographical spread of this species by unknowingly carrying it across state lines in their luggage. The brown recluse spider, according to Paul N. Morgan, research microbiologist at the Little Rock, Arkansas, Veterans Administration Hospital, “constitutes a hazard to the health of man, perhaps greater than the Black Widow.”