Thus in the inquiry as to the possible prevention of the deadly effect of snake poison introduced into the human body by the bite of snakes, the first question asked was, “Is it true, as sometimes stated, that a poisonous snake is not poisoned by having its own poison injected into its flesh?” The experiment was tried. The answer was, “It is true.” Next it was asked, “Is this due to the action of very small doses of the poison which pass constantly from the poison gland into the snake’s blood, and so render the snake ‘immune,’ as happens in the case of other poisons?” The experiment was tried. Snakes without poison glands were found to be killed by the introduction of snake’s poison in a full dose into their blood. Then it was found that a horse could be injected with a dose of snake poison, or half the quantity necessary to cause death, and that it recovered in a few days. The question was now put, “Is the horse so treated rendered immune to snake poison, as the snake is which receives small doses of poison into its blood from its own poison gland?” Accordingly the experiment was made. The horse was given a full dose of snake poison, and did not suffer any inconvenience. At intervals of two days it was given increasing injections of snake poison without suffering in any way, until at last an injection in one dose of thirty times the deadly quantity of snake poison—that is, enough to kill thirty unprepared horses—was made into the same horse, and it did not show the smallest inconvenience. The question was thus answered: Immunity to snake-bite can be conferred by the absorption of small quantities (non-lethal doses) of snake poison. The next question was this: “If something has been formed in the horse’s blood by this process, which is an antidote to snake poison, should it not be possible, by removing some of the horse’s blood and injecting a small quantity of it into a smaller animal, to protect that animal from snake bite?” The experiment was accordingly made. Rabbits and dogs received injections of the blood of the immune horse. An hour after they received full doses of snake poison. They suffered no inconvenience at all; they were “protected,” or “rendered immune.” The next question was, “Will the antidote act on an animal after it has already been bitten by a snake?” The experiment was made. Rabbits were injected with snake poison. After a quarter of an hour they were on the point of death. A dose of the immune horse’s blood was now injected into each—in ten minutes they had completely recovered and were feeding. The means was thus found of preventing death from snake-bite. The protective horse-blood was properly prepared, and sent out at once to Cochin China and to India. It was there tried upon human beings who had been accidentally bitten by deadly snakes, and it proved absolutely effective; it saved the men’s lives. It is now used (wherever it can be obtained in time) as the sure antidote to snake-bite, though it is not at present possible to supply it whenever and wherever it is needed. That is an example, briefly told, of the experimental questioning of Nature—such as is pursued in the laboratories of medical men and physiologists. They do not perform haphazard experiments; but each experiment is so arranged as to give a definite answer to a definite question, leading to a large result. By no other process can knowledge of many things, which it is urgent for us to have, be obtained. We should have to wait centuries if we merely watched Nature, and hoped for some accidental circumstance to reveal the facts.
What, after all, do we understand and mean by “pain”? It is not merely the sharp sting, and consequent shrinking caused by wounds and violence. That, we know well enough, is a beneficent arrangement by which men as well as animals are prevented from knocking themselves to pieces, and are driven into avoiding danger to life and limb. But “pain” includes, besides this, the anguish arising from the weary, fruitless struggle against disease and starvation, from the disaster to the household caused by the untimely death of its mainstay, from the slaughter of children by poisonous foods, and from the neglect of the laws of health of body and mind.
Ignorance, the “curse of Hell,” is the cause of all suffering. Knowledge is the wing which takes us heavenward, and frees us from misery. I cannot put it better than in Shakespeare’s words. It is man’s destiny to diminish pain on this earth, and that not by timidly shrinking from and emotionally raving about the horrors of pain, but by facing them and deliberately accepting the responsibility of producing a small and brief suffering to a few animals as the price of the salvation of his fellow-creatures from the far greater pain which is the assured and fatal companion of ignorance—accursed ignorance!
A recent writer has told us that he cannot believe that good will follow from the wilful destruction by man of Nature’s greatest and most beautiful production—a living thing. He poses as a sentimentalist and seems to regard it as the indication of a superior and gentle mind to refuse to sanction the removal or even the temporary discomfort of what Nature has called into life. I, too, claim to be a sentimentalist, but the sentiment which thrills me is one of revolt against the needless and remediable suffering of all humanity—suffering which man has brought on himself by his stumbling, half-hearted resistance to Nature’s drastic method of purifying and strengthening the race, her remorseless slaughter of the unfit. It is this suffering which some would allow their fellow-men still to endure, now and for generations to come, rather than have their own tranquillity disturbed by the record of that modicum of immediate pain and sacrifice of animal life which is the price of freedom for mankind from far greater pain hereafter. We have to learn to mitigate and to minimise pain, not to run away from it. It is childish to weep over the distortion and destruction of Nature’s products by man’s violence and ignorance. What we can and should do is to see that our dealings with this fair earth and its living freight are guided not by vain regret, but by knowledge and foresight.
THE END
R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST. HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.