nized globules, man
arrogates to himself supernal attributes whereby it becomes possible
not only to save and renew, _but to create life_; and we can scarce
expect science or even accident (as some expect) to even rival Nature
and set at defiance her most secret and subtle laws. Such, however, is
the natural outcropping of an ignorant teaching and vulgar prejudice
that feeds and clothes the charlatan and ascribes to savage and
uncultured races an occult familiarity with pathological,
physiological, and remedial effect unattainable by the most advanced
sciences; and whereby the Negro, Malay, Hindoo, South Sea Islander,
and red man are granted an innate knowledge of poisons and their
antidotes more than miraculous. A reward of more than a quarter of a
century's standing, and amounting to several thousand pounds, is
offered by the East India Government for the discovery of a specific
for the bite of the cobra, and for which no claims have ever been
advanced; and the "snake charmers" or jugglers in whom this superior
knowledge is supposed to center are so well aware of the futility of
specifics, and the risk to which they are subjected, that few venture
to ply their calling without a broad-bladed, keen-edged knife
concealed about the person as a means of instant amputation in case of
accident. Medical and scientific associations of various classes, in
Europe, Australia, America, even Africa, and the East and West Indies,
have repeatedly held out the most tempting lures, and indulged in
exhaustive and costly experimentation in search of specifics for the
wounds of vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes, and the general horde of
venomous reptiles; and all in vain. Even the saliva of man, as well as
certain other secretions, is at times so modified by anger as to rival
the venom of the serpent in fatality, and it has no specific; and a
careful analysis of the pathological relations of such poison proves
that further experimentation and expectation is as irrational as the
pursuit of the "philosopher's stone."

It is an indisputable fact, however, that there are individuals whose
natural or acquired idiosyncrasies permit them to be inoculated by the
most venomous of reptiles without deleterious or unpleasant results,
and Colonel Matthews Taylor[7] knew several persons of this character
in India, and who regarded the bite of the cobra or tic paloonga with
nearly as much indifference as the sting of a gnat or mosquito. Again,
in 1868, Mr.