is statement as to the fatality of crotalus poison advisedly.
I know the belief is very common that the poison of a rattlesnake is
readily combated by full doses of whisky. This is fallacious. I have
taken the pains to investigate a number of instances of cure resulting
from the employment of free stimulation. In each case the fangs did
not penetrate deeply into the tissues, but either scratched over the
surface or tore through, making a wound of entrance and exit, so that
the poison, or at least the major part of it, was not injected into
the tissues of the person struck. The effect is very much the same as
when an inexperienced practitioner picks up a fold of skin for the
purpose of making a hypodermic injection, and plunges his needle
entirely through, forcing the medicament wide of his patient.

Nearly all, if not all, of the cases treated by stimulation alone
have, according to my experience, perished if they have received a
full dose of virus from a vigorous snake. One of these cases lived for
upward of a month. He then perished of what might be considered a
chronic pyaemia, the symptoms being those of blood poisoning,
accompanied by multiple abscesses. Another case, not occurring in my
own practice, died at the end of four days apparently of cardiac
failure. Active delirium persisted all through this case. Two other
cases treated by stimulants also died with symptoms of more or less
acute blood poisoning.

The feeling is almost universal among the people of Wyoming that a
fair strike from a rattlesnake is certain death, and that the free use
of stimulants simply postpones the end. I do not for a moment deny
that a strong, lusty man may be struck fairly by a rattlesnake and if
the wound is at once opened and cauterized, and the heart judiciously
supported, he may yet recover; still the fact remains that the great
majority of these cases perish at a longer or shorter interval
following the infliction of the wound. Hence any treatment that will
save even the majority of such cases is a distinct gain, and one which
has saved every one of nine cases to which it has been applied needs
no further commendation.

The first case of rattlesnake wound to which I was called occurred in
1885. A cow boy was bitten on the foot, the fang penetrating through
the boot. He was brought forty miles to Fort Fetterman, where I was
then stationed. I saw him about twenty-four hours after he was struck.
There was an enormous swelling, e