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which, translated into English, means that whoever aims at any great
achievement must quietly, but indefatigably, concentrate the highest
force on the smallest point. Now this smallest point has to the writer
been snake-poison from the very commencement of his Australian career.
When yet a new-chum, a vigorous tiger snake gave him the first lesson on
the action of the insidious venom which nearly cost him his life, but
afforded some valuable glimpses into the mystery of snakebite--in fact,
gave him the key to unlock that mystery. On analysing the horrid
sensations he had experienced before he lost consciousness, and even
after regaining it, he saw "depressed nerve-action, emanating from the
central nervous system," written on the face of every one of them, so
much so that this became the foundation and corner stone of his present
structure, which, however, it took him a quarter of a century to erect;
for the material he required, namely, cases of snakebite observed from
an early stage, and from which all disturbing elements were excluded,
did not occur very frequently in his practice. Though he lived all the
time among mountains, the beautiful Australian Alps, on the rivers and
creeks of which snakes are abundant, and though these creatures and
anything connected with them had an almost fascinating interest for him,
years sometimes elapsed without adding one single good case to his
notes. Sometimes his patients were dead when he reached them, and all
his entreaties for an autopsy were in vain with the relatives. More
frequently he found that they were not bitten at all, and only suffered
from the effects of fear or of enormous doses of alcohol. On persons
really bitten, but completely paralysed and comatose, observations were
also unsatisfactory, as they had to be supplemented by second-hand
evidence obtained from those who had been with them before they became
unconscious. Thus within 25 years the author did not see more than
half-a-dozen really instructive cases; and frequently his desire for
more evidence overcame his reluctance to inflict on animals the agony of
snakebite he had himself endured, and he made a few experiments, but
soon gave them up again as unsatisfactory. All the evidence, however, he
had thus far collected tended to confirm the correctness of his ideas as
to the action of snake-poison. At last, some ten years ago, he obtained
absolute certainty, and this, strange to relate, by a case of spider
b