t Row will invite the passer-by to visit Mr.
Nagshett's world-renowned Serpent Tamasha, Mungoose and Cobra Fight,
Mango-tree Illusion, etc. Entrance, one rupee.

XI

CURES FOR SNAKE-BITE

In a little book on the snakes of India, published many years ago by Dr.
Nicholson of the Madras Medical Service, the conviction was expressed
that the snake-charmers of Burmah knew of some antidote to the poison of
the cobra which gave them confidence in handling it. He said that
nothing would induce them to divulge it, but that he suspected it
consisted in gradual inoculation with the venom itself. Putting the
question to himself why he did not attempt to attest this by experiment,
he replied that there were two reasons, which, if I recollect rightly,
were, first, that he had a strong natural repugnance to anything like
cruelty to animals, and, secondly, that he had observed that as soon as
a man got the notion into his head that he had discovered a cure for
snake-bite, he began to show symptoms of insanity.

It is rather remarkable that, after so many years, another Scottish
doctor, not in Madras, but in Edinburgh, has proved, by just such
experiments as Dr. Nicholson shrank from, that an "aged and previously
sedate horse" may, by gradual inoculation with cobra poison, be
rendered so thoroughly proof against it that a dose which would suffice
to kill ten ordinary horses only imparts "increased vigour and
liveliness" to it. Further, Dr. Fraser has found that the serum of the
blood of an animal thus rendered proof against poison is itself an
antidote capable of combating that poison after it has been at work for
thirty minutes in the veins of a rabbit, and arresting its effects. And
all this has been achieved without apparent detriment to the
distinguished doctor's sanity.

This must be intensely interesting intelligence to Englishmen throughout
India, and joyful intelligence too, for, scoff as we may at the danger
of being bitten by a poisonous snake, nobody likes to think that, if
such a thing _should_ happen to him (and very narrow escapes sometimes
remind us that it may), there would be nothing for him to do but to lie
down and die. And so, ever since the Honourable East India Company was
chartered, the antidote to snake poison has been a sort of philosopher's
stone, sought after by doctors and men of science along many lines of
investigation. And every now and then somebody has risen up and
announced that he has fou