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SNAKE-BITE AND SNAKE-LORE.
826
practitioner who sent the sample thought that they skin that a snake doth cast off, gotten or gathered when the might occasionally find their way into the urine. moon is in the full, being also in the first part of Aries the In this case, also, questioning the patient showed that Ram, he shall see terrible and fearful dreams. And if he the source of the deposit was a powder containing shall have it under the sole of his foot he shall be acceptable In another instance, in which a urine contained before magistrates and princes." starch. a sediment of "uncertain character," microscopic examination revealed the presence of the threads of leptothrix SCOTTISH POOR-LAW MEDICAL OFFICERS. buccalis together with fragments of meat and vegetable SOME little time ago Mr. Galloway Weir, M.P., asked for fibres, thus plainly indicating that the deposit originally a return of those Scottish Poor-law medical officers who had came from the mouth. Patients occasionally add substances been dismissed by their parish councils: The report is now to the urine for purposes of deception, but the above cases published and shows "the number of medical officers dis. show how important it is not only to make sure that the missed by parish councils in each crofting county during collecting and examining vessels are perfectly clean, but each of the seven years 1895-1901, name of the parish that in doubtful cases the patients themselves should be council, and the cases in which a cause of dismis al was as to possible sources of error. Other extraneous matters also lead to mistakes and we have seen a fragment of pine-wood from the floor mistaken for an epithelial cast ; moreover, particles of silk, cotton, or linen fibres frequently puzzle students who are not conversant with their nature.
carefully questioned
____
SNAKE-BITE AND SNAKE-LORE. THE subject of snake-bite may occasionally engage the individual practitioner in a moorland country-side where, especially in the summer and autumn, cases are not unknown of infants dying from collapse after being bitten by vipers. We have recently been informed that the " infallible remedy"used by Brusher"Mills, the well-known New Forest snake catcher, for the bite of the adder or viper is the fat of the creature itself melted, bottled, and applied a drop at a time to the wound. The cure, he asserts, is an affair of two minutes. Mills has, of course, had immense experience with snakes, having in his day killed or taken more than 4000 venomous and 27,000 harmless specimens. He has, in fact, practically devastated his own field of operations round Lyndhurst. His belief in his remedy is shared by Wiltshire and Hampshire rustics and is doubtless universal in the country districts of England. The is whether this treatment is a survival of question merely the old savage homoeopathy which ordains a hair of the dog that bit you as a cure for the bite, or whether it is a rude form of serum-therapy. Vipers are exceedingly quarrelsome from the moment they break the egg and unless immune " We publish this return with pleasure. It wil against venom would long ago have ceased to exist as a assigned. serve to show intending applicants for Scottish Poor-law distinct species. Hence their fat may be a kind of It will Of course, all fatty and oily substances are appointments which parishes should be avoided. antitoxin. be that Irish medical remembered and Poor-law English useful against poisons, which they doubtless absorb and isolate. The old-fashioned " London viper catchers," officers have a right of appeal to their respective Local mentioned by White of Selborne and others always Government Boards but the Scottish Poor-law medical otlicer has none. employed hot olive oil as a cure or treatment for snake-bite, and this with ammonia continues to be GENERAL PARALYSIS AND ITS TREATMENT BY recommended. We read of the oil-cure in works on THE MIXED METHOD. natural history but find no mention of the peasants’ use of M. DEVAY of Lyon published in Le Progres Medical of fat. How came it to be used in the first instance? Prob23rd a communication regarding the treatment of August in with the that accordance fat, blood, ably savage theory sputum and so forth, contain the life-principle or "soul" general paralysis of the insane by the "mixed intensive" of men and animals and are therefore a cure for any lesion. method of mercury and the iodides, a method allied to Fat was anciently used to frighten away serpents from the treatment with benzoate of mercury published by gardens and houses. The "suet of deer strewed up and Professor Lemoine and to1 which reference was recently He has treated in all 90 down where they [adders] come will cause them to depart," made in these columns. cases and gives the results obtained in 21 cases, the latter says Agrippa of Nettesheim, whose ideas, despite his scepticism, were often those of the tribal medicine-man. Bacon consisting of patients the course of whose illness was fat, mixed with the brains of a weazel, is recommended by watched for some length of time. The results obtained by him to scare away rats and mice. Drugs and charms obtained M. Devay are summed up by him under the headings of from snakes are, of course, very ancient. The witches in amelioration, remission, and morbification of the symptoms Macbeth make a baleful viper-broth, but the same mix- of general paralysis, and on the whole the issues were Although accepting the theory of the parature was also a medicine and core for many diseases. favourable. The sloughs of snakes had also The sixteenth syphiliticnature of the disease he does not regard the uses. ____
"
singular
century Jerome
saying,
Cardan is quoted in an old chap-book as "If any do sprinkle his head with the powder of
a
1 THE LANCET, Sept. 6th, 1902, p. 690, annotation On the " Intensive " Mercurial Treatment of General Paralysis and Tabes Dorsalis.
practitioner who sent the sample thought that they skin that a snake doth cast off, gotten or gathered when the might occasionally find their way into the urine. moon is in the full, being also in the first part of Aries the In this case, also, questioning the patient showed that Ram, he shall see terrible and fearful dreams. And if he the source of the deposit was a powder containing shall have it under the sole of his foot he shall be acceptable In another instance, in which a urine contained before magistrates and princes." starch. a sediment of "uncertain character," microscopic examination revealed the presence of the threads of leptothrix SCOTTISH POOR-LAW MEDICAL OFFICERS. buccalis together with fragments of meat and vegetable SOME little time ago Mr. Galloway Weir, M.P., asked for fibres, thus plainly indicating that the deposit originally a return of those Scottish Poor-law medical officers who had came from the mouth. Patients occasionally add substances been dismissed by their parish councils: The report is now to the urine for purposes of deception, but the above cases published and shows "the number of medical officers dis. show how important it is not only to make sure that the missed by parish councils in each crofting county during collecting and examining vessels are perfectly clean, but each of the seven years 1895-1901, name of the parish that in doubtful cases the patients themselves should be council, and the cases in which a cause of dismis al was as to possible sources of error. Other extraneous matters also lead to mistakes and we have seen a fragment of pine-wood from the floor mistaken for an epithelial cast ; moreover, particles of silk, cotton, or linen fibres frequently puzzle students who are not conversant with their nature.
carefully questioned
____
SNAKE-BITE AND SNAKE-LORE. THE subject of snake-bite may occasionally engage the individual practitioner in a moorland country-side where, especially in the summer and autumn, cases are not unknown of infants dying from collapse after being bitten by vipers. We have recently been informed that the " infallible remedy"used by Brusher"Mills, the well-known New Forest snake catcher, for the bite of the adder or viper is the fat of the creature itself melted, bottled, and applied a drop at a time to the wound. The cure, he asserts, is an affair of two minutes. Mills has, of course, had immense experience with snakes, having in his day killed or taken more than 4000 venomous and 27,000 harmless specimens. He has, in fact, practically devastated his own field of operations round Lyndhurst. His belief in his remedy is shared by Wiltshire and Hampshire rustics and is doubtless universal in the country districts of England. The is whether this treatment is a survival of question merely the old savage homoeopathy which ordains a hair of the dog that bit you as a cure for the bite, or whether it is a rude form of serum-therapy. Vipers are exceedingly quarrelsome from the moment they break the egg and unless immune " We publish this return with pleasure. It wil against venom would long ago have ceased to exist as a assigned. serve to show intending applicants for Scottish Poor-law distinct species. Hence their fat may be a kind of It will Of course, all fatty and oily substances are appointments which parishes should be avoided. antitoxin. be that Irish medical remembered and Poor-law English useful against poisons, which they doubtless absorb and isolate. The old-fashioned " London viper catchers," officers have a right of appeal to their respective Local mentioned by White of Selborne and others always Government Boards but the Scottish Poor-law medical otlicer has none. employed hot olive oil as a cure or treatment for snake-bite, and this with ammonia continues to be GENERAL PARALYSIS AND ITS TREATMENT BY recommended. We read of the oil-cure in works on THE MIXED METHOD. natural history but find no mention of the peasants’ use of M. DEVAY of Lyon published in Le Progres Medical of fat. How came it to be used in the first instance? Prob23rd a communication regarding the treatment of August in with the that accordance fat, blood, ably savage theory sputum and so forth, contain the life-principle or "soul" general paralysis of the insane by the "mixed intensive" of men and animals and are therefore a cure for any lesion. method of mercury and the iodides, a method allied to Fat was anciently used to frighten away serpents from the treatment with benzoate of mercury published by gardens and houses. The "suet of deer strewed up and Professor Lemoine and to1 which reference was recently He has treated in all 90 down where they [adders] come will cause them to depart," made in these columns. cases and gives the results obtained in 21 cases, the latter says Agrippa of Nettesheim, whose ideas, despite his scepticism, were often those of the tribal medicine-man. Bacon consisting of patients the course of whose illness was fat, mixed with the brains of a weazel, is recommended by watched for some length of time. The results obtained by him to scare away rats and mice. Drugs and charms obtained M. Devay are summed up by him under the headings of from snakes are, of course, very ancient. The witches in amelioration, remission, and morbification of the symptoms Macbeth make a baleful viper-broth, but the same mix- of general paralysis, and on the whole the issues were Although accepting the theory of the parature was also a medicine and core for many diseases. favourable. The sloughs of snakes had also The sixteenth syphiliticnature of the disease he does not regard the uses. ____
"
singular
century Jerome
saying,
Cardan is quoted in an old chap-book as "If any do sprinkle his head with the powder of
a
1 THE LANCET, Sept. 6th, 1902, p. 690, annotation On the " Intensive " Mercurial Treatment of General Paralysis and Tabes Dorsalis.