The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-12-06

dealer mas sent to the university Ol
 Cambridgs more than two hundred poi
 sonous snakes. A practising physician
 in the city-himself a noted bacteriolo-
 gist-has supplied the University of Heidelberg with five hundred poison
 snakes of American species. More than
 one thousand snakes have been for
 warded to Munich from one snake house here to be used in chemical eX-
 periments. Paris takes large quanti-
 ties of our snakes, and students in our
 own country are experimenting largely
 with snake venom.
 A New York physician, who has
 probably carried the study of snake
 toXine further than any other man in l New York, and whose experiments
 have attracted great interest in the
 world of science, knows as much about
 poisonous snakes as any one in this
 country and handles them with imper-
 turbabe serenity.
 There is little or no danger, if one
 exercises ordinary common sense," he
 said to Sun reporter. We ought to
 get rid of our unreasonable fear of
 serpents. It is childish and unwarant-
 cd but it seems to be instinctive. Even
 animals have the same fear and will slink out of the way of even a small
 snake. Like every one else, I rad to i overcome that fear at the outset, but now I haven't even a trace of the feel
 ing and my children are all as uncan- cerned as I in regard to snakes. I car ry on my experiments at the Academy of Medicine; but from time to time I've
 had collections of snakes on the top floor of my own house and even my smallest boy would go among them and play with them. Of course I never allow the children to touch a poison snake without my assistance, for some accident might occur; but I did want them to cultivate a rational attitude to- ward the creatures and lose all fear of them.
 My attention was called to the sub- ject of snake venom by something that read in one of my children's books to the effect that certain animals were inn mune from snake bite. The thing in- terested me so I imported a hedgehog and then started out to get some poi sonous snakes. I found that much harder than it had been to obtain the hedgehog No dealers handled them. Only the pythons and bigharmless snakes were to be had That was six years ago Now there are numbers of dealers who handle snakes in large quantities, and it is possible to buy right here in the city almost any poi son snake one wants. The scientific de- T !, developing that branch of the snake trade. The snake charmers and fan ciers don't, as q rule, want poison snakes. We want nothing else.
 You see bacteriology is the great thing in medical science to-day, and by the comparison of snake toXinesl we ar- rive at some interesting results. There has been very little minute study of the effects of toxines upon the nervous system and the circulation, and that study is of absorbing interest. 1t isn't that we are merely trying to find anti dotes for snake bites. We want to ana lyze snake toxinas, study their effects on the human organism, compare the poisons and their effects with the toX- ines generated by the bacilli of various diseases, and so get around to the an- tidotes or cures for those diseases.
 'The toxines produced by bacilli va fies. The composition of snake poison i.9 constant-that is, the poison of all snakes of the same species is the same in composition consequently 1t is better for purposes of cientific experiment than toxines of bacilli. I take this glass cup fastened to a tube and bulb. hold the snake by the throut and make it bite upon the opposite edges of the little glass cup. The venom drops into the cup and runs down through the tube, and there I have the pure, un- adulterated poison.
 "Of course, some of the experiment. ing is done upon small animals but it is done under the auspices and protee- ton of medical societies, and it would be foolish to object to 1t upon humane grounds, just as it is foolish to object to feeding snakes in captivity on what they have always killed and eaten in their free state. It is hard on the smaller animals to be eaten, but it is law, and the snake has as much right to life and to the protection of humane societies as the rabbit or mouse or frog. Very remarkable discoveries in the field of chemistry and medicine have already been made through this study of snake venom, and still greater discoveries may be-undoubtedly will be made. The interest in the subject is keen and widespread"
 The question of snake feeding, upon which the doctor touched lightly, has been a vexed one-humane societies have objected to feeding snakes on live birds and animals, and the snakes have as strenuously objected to touching food that had been killed. After a snake has been long in captivity it may possibly learn to eat dead food but 1t never likes it, and some snakes can l never be induced to touch it, save by force. A python prefers indolently to death to eating food that 1t has not killed, and the only way in | which the big pythons of the Bronx ! Zoo are kept alive Is by the process | known In the snake trade as stuffing.
 Five or six attendants enter the cage | and lay violent hands on MT. Python, | who writhes vainly. Another attend | ant opens the snakes jaws and shoycs . the snakes rations down it's unwilling throat, poking the dinner far enough . town so that the snake will not be able