The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-16
BITTEN BY A NEVILI.O,
- ~ ONE OF THE TERRORS OF
 LIFE

Lizard From Whose Deadly Potsor
 Only One Man is Known to Hav,
 Recovered-The Treatment Which
 Saved Him From Death.
 T guess I am the only living man
 that has been bitten by the neville, a
 venomous lizard of the isthmus of Te-
 huantepec,' said William w. Gloom, a New Yorker with Central American ex-
 periences. This lizard is of the Gila Imonster family and is a horrid looking
 reptile of mottIed liver color and is from six to ten inches long. Its bite is
 deadly, and, as l said, I am the only person known who has lived after being
 bitten. It was a case of nip and tuck, though, and I didn't get over it for two months or more.
 | '"The brute bit me out of pure malice, for l wasn't doing thing to it. I had a coffee plantation down on the isthmus several years ago and just before the | hot season began, which was in March had as my guest Dr. Fergus MacDon- aid of the Smithsonian institution. who was in that country in the interest of science. While he was with me we re- ceiyed an invitation to visit the great plantation of Dr. Pedro Argullles, one of the most prominent men of that country, and we went to his hacienda near Minititlan. The ladies of the fam fly had all gone to Mexico City, and as the weather was hot we men Ioafed around in our pajamas, the upper gar ment of which is big sleeved affair called camisa.
 One day Dr, Macdonald and l had adjourned to the patio or court of the building, and while I lay in the grass talking to him he was busy greasing and putting into shape his guns and re- volvers. He was six or eight feet away from me, and l was lying with my head propped up on my arm, from which the sleeve had slipped, leaving it exposed to the elbow. which rested on the grass. Of course neither of US was thinking about reptiles or other dangers right there in the court of the building Sud denly, as I talked, the doctor threw his hand up in warning, and I knew that whatever it was he saw there was dan- ger in my moving, and I must keep still. So I kept as steady as I could, and then l felt something go up my arm toward my head and stop near my wrist.
 T couldn't see what it was, but I knew something about tropical reptiles and l kept perfectly quiet while the doctor caught up one of his revolvers and threw couple of cartridges into it. He aimed across my body and fired, and as I jumped to my feet a neville at least seven inches long fell writhing to the ground, shot through the head. The bullet had gone on into my arm and came out at the elbow and l was bleeding. Between the bullet marks though, were the fang marks where the neville had struck it's teeth into my arm, and l told the doctor I thought it had got me. As soon as he saw it he gave me some kind of a hypodermic in jection in the left leg, the right arm having been bitten, and at once took his knife and slashed me across the fang marks. Into the wounds of my arm he poured bottle of concentrated ammonia. Almost instantly after I | had been bitten I began to grow dizzy 1 and to see what seemed to me to be l clouds of light smoke, and when the l struck me l keeled over in a, | dead faint.
 Five days later I awoke in a mud l bath by the riverside, my body twice it's | normal size and my tongue sticking out | of my mouth. They had carried me there as soon as I fainted. and night | and day my guide and his daughter had been watching by me, with fires at night to keep off the animals from the | jungle. Every twelve hours my arm was lifted from the mud and cleansed, | and on those occasions it was always | 'ound to be of a green color. As soon IS I returned to consciousness I was 'arried to the house and put to bed and .here for two weeks I remained and hen went down to the coast and up to he we'll known hot springs, where I vas treated for two months until every )it of the venom had left my body. During it all I suffered no pain, nor rave I ever felt the slightest inconven- ence since What effect the bullet wound ill the arm had I don't know. Possibly the blood that came from the bullet wounds saved me. Anyhow omet hing happened that never hap ,ened to any other person bitten by a evilo, or I wouldn't be here to tell the tory.' r MT Gloom barred his arm for the bene- it of the listeners, and if an arm ever 1oked as if it had been through hard that one did. It was scared | { S if burnt with hot irons and covered l rom the elbow down with all kinds of shaped mottled spots of bout the same color as the lizard lew York Sun.
 
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