Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1897-10-14
A STRANGE DISCOVERY.

lite.
Another very effective agent for
overcoming the venom of serpents
has been discovered by Professor
Thomas R. Fraser of the University
of Edinburgh. 1t is not whisky,
wherewith Americans antagonize
the poison of rattlesnakes, nor is it
M. Calmette's antitoxic serum, OBJ
tanned from the blood of animals
which have been rendered immune
by successive inoculations with
small quantities of the venom. The
new antidote is nothing more or less
than the serpent's own bile. In re-
porting a series of elaborate expert
ments conducted by himself Profess
or Fraser recently said:
1.-THE bile from the gall bladder of
the African cobra, puff adder, rattle
snake and grass snake was used,
and each bile was tested against the
venom of the African and the In
dian cobra. For the most part the
experiments were made by mixing
various quantities of each bile with
alittle more than the minimum fatal
dose of the venom and then inject
ing this mixture under the skin of
the animal. The object of the ex-
periments was not only to determine
if the bile can render venom innocu-
GUS, but also, if it have this power,
what is the smallest quantity of bile
capable of doing it."
Having recounted the various
doses which he employed and their
effects, he thus summarizes the re-
suit: sit was thus shown that the
bile of venomous serpents is able,
when mixed with the venom of
serpents, to prevent lethal doses
of the latter from producing death,
and that the bile is, indeed, so
powerful an agent in doing this
that quantity actually smaller
than the quantity of venom may
be sufficient for the purpose. 1t
need scarcely be added that the
doses of bile thus shown to be sufi-
Gent represent only minute portions
of the bile stored in the gall bladder
of a serpent, and that a serpent,
therefore, has at its disposal enougl
bile to prevent injury from venom
introduced into the stomach in guam.
titles many times greater than the
minimum lethal."
| The bile of harmless serpents was
also tested and found to be effective,
though in less degree. The same
secretion from an animal like the OK
was made the subject of other ex-
periments. 1t was even less power
full than the bile of innocuous snakes
and about one-seventh as strong in
its antitoxic influence as the bite of
the cobra or asp, but if enough of
it were used it would overcome a
fatal dose of the poison.
DR.. Fraser found that he could iso-
late the particular element in SER
pent's bite which has this surprising
property SO that the antidote can be
prepared for the market in very
compact form, and the process of
manufacture is probably quite as
simple as and perhaps more rapid
than that of NJ. Calmette.
Precisely how he obtained his clew
the Edinburgh savant does not say,
but he incidentally remarks that
some of the native snake doctors in
Africa have remedy, compounded
of several substances, of which one
is snake bile, and they are accus-
toned to administer it not only by
introducing it into the patient S
stomach, where it is probably with
out effect, but also by rubbing it in
to the wound, where it would be alb
sorbed into the blood. It is proba-
BILE, therefore, that this wonderful
provision of nature, which compels
a serpent to secrete in one part of its
system cure for the poison that it
sec1etes in another, has long been
known in some of those .countrie
where the information is most likely
to prove beneficial to mankind
New York Tribune.
/