nd it, and has had disciples for a season.

But one remedy after another, though it might give startling results in
the laboratory, has proved to be useless in common life, and the
majority of Englishmen have long since resigned themselves to the
conclusion that there is no practical cure for the bite of a poisonous
snake. For what avails it to carry about in your travelling bag a phial
of strong ammonia and to live in more jeopardy of death by asphyxiation
than you ever were by snakes, unless you have some guarantee that, when
it is your fate to be bitten by a snake, the phial will be at hand? For
ammonia must act on the venom before the venom has had time to act upon
you, or it will only add another pain to your end; and that gives only a
few minutes to go upon. So with nitric acid and every agent that
operates by neutralising the poison and not by counteracting its
effects. And this has been the character of all the remedies hitherto
put forward. "They are," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, "absolutely without any
specific effect on the condition produced by the poison."

But "anti-venene," as Dr. Fraser calls his immunised blood-serum,
follows the poison into the system, even after the fatal symptoms have
begun to show themselves, and arrests them at once. So the Anglo-Indian
may throw away his ammonia phial and, arming himself with another of
anti-venene and a hypodermic syringe, feel that he is safe against an
accident which will never happen. As for the man who is not nervous, he
will speak of the new antidote, and think of it as most interesting and
valuable, and go on his way as before with no expectation of ever being
bitten by a venomous snake. The medical man of every degree will order
a supply as soon as it is to be had, and conscientiously try to stamp
out the smouldering hope within him that somebody in the station will
soon be bitten by a cobra and give him a chance.

Among the dusky millions of India Dr. Fraser's discovery will create no
"catholic ravishment" because they will not hear of it. And if they did
hear of it they would regard his labours as misapplied and the result as
superfluous. For the Hindu has never shared the Englishman's opinion
that there is no cure for snake-bite. On the contrary, he is assured
that there are not one or two but many specifics for the bite of every
kind of snake, known to those whose business it is to know them. If they
are not invariably efficacious, it is for the simple re