Chapter XII: Appendix: B

SUMMARY OF TREATMENT OF PERSONS BITTEN BY VENOMOUS SNAKES.[4]

As soon as possible after a person is bitten by a snake, apply a ligature, made of a piece of cord, round the limb or part at about two or three inches above the bite.

Introduce a piece of stick or other lever between the cord and the part, and by twisting tighten the ligature to the utmost (See Stick Tourniquet, p. 224).

Apply other two or three ligatures above the first one at intervals of four or six inches, and tighten them also. After the ligature has been applied, scarify by cutting across the puncture to the depth of a quarter of an inch with a penknife or other similar cutting instrument, and let the wounds bleed freely; or better still, excise the punctured part.

Apply either a hot iron or live coal to the bottom of these wounds as quickly as possible, or some carbolic or nitric acid.

If the bite be not on a finger or toe or part where a ligature can be applied, raise up the integument with the finger and thumb, and with a sharp penknife cut out a circular piece as big as a finger nail round each puncture, _i.e._, round the points of the finger and thumb, to the depth of quarter to half an inch. Then apply the hot coal or hot iron to the very bottom of the wounds.

Give fifteen drops of Liquor Ammoniæ, diluted with an ounce of water, immediately, and repeat it every quarter of an hour for three or four doses, or longer, if symptoms of poisoning appear.

Or give hot brandy, or rum, or whisky, or other spirit, with an equal quantity of water, about an ounce of each (for an adult) at the same intervals.

Should no symptoms of poisoning appear in half an hour after the application of the ligatures they should be relaxed, or the part will perish from gangrene; if they should, however, appear, the ligatures should not be relaxed until the person be recovering from the poison, or until the ligatured part be cold and livid.

Suction of the wounds is likely to be beneficial, but as it may be dangerous to the operator, it cannot be recommended as a duty.

If, notwithstanding, symptoms of poisoning set in, and increase, if the patient become faint or depressed, unconscious, nauseated or sick, apply Mustard Poultices, or Liquor Ammoniæ on a cloth, over the stomach and heart; continue the stimulants, and keep the patient warm, but do not shut him up in a hot, stifling room or small native hut; rather leave him in the fresh air than do this.

Do not make him walk about if weary or depressed; rouse him with stimulants, mustard poultices, or ammonia, but let him rest.

If the person be first seen some time after the bite has been inflicted, and symptoms of poisoning are present, the same measures are to be resorted to. They are less likely to be successful, but nothing else can be done.

In many cases the prostration is due to fear; the bite may have been that of a harmless or exhausted snake, and persons thus bitten will rapidly recover under the use of the above measures. If poisoned, but, as is frequently the case, not fatally, these measures are the most expedient; if severely poisoned, no others are likely to be more efficacious.

People should be warned against incantations, popular antidotes, and loss of time in seeking for aid.

To the above remarks, Sir J. Fayrer adds: "The measures suggested are no doubt severe, and not such as under other circumstances should be entrusted to non-professional persons. But the alternative is so dreadful that even at the risk of unskilful treatment, it is better that the patient should have this chance of recovery."

PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED BY PERSONS RESIDING IN SNAKE-INFESTED LOCALITIES.

That prevention is better than cure is admitted on all hands; hence those persons whose lot is cast in snake-infested localities will do well to lay to heart the following passage from the official "Report on Indian and Australian Snake-poisoning," by Drs. Joseph Ewart, Vincent Richards, and S. Coull Mackenzie (Calcutta, 1874).

The poisonous snakes of India, as a general rule, "are, until provoked, perfectly inoffensive to all animals not required by them as food. They seldom assume the aggressive until they are rudely and accidentally disturbed. Thus a native sleeping on the ground rolls over a venomous snake, or whilst walking in the jungle, or long grass, or in the dark, treads upon some part of a snake's body. In either case the snake bites if he can. It is in this way that a large proportion of snake accidents happen.

"A large number of lives would be saved annually if the native population could be prevailed upon to _sleep on charpoys_, and if they got into the habit of _never stepping from their beds at night without first seeing, by means of a light, that the ground below is clear, and free from snakes_. Much of the immunity which Europeans and educated natives enjoy from snakebite is due to their using these very necessary precautions, especially during the rainy season, and in the mofussil by their _never walking abroad at night without a light_. There is scarcely a European of experience in the mofussil who cannot recount examples of lives (often their own) having been saved by means of these simple precautions."

To the above judicious advice (the most important points of which I have italicised) may be added the following excellent practical precautions, communicated to me by friends whose Indian experience gives great weight to their suggestions.

1. Snakes never voluntarily traverse rough or broken ground: it is therefore advisable in snake-infested localities to surround your dwelling with a cordon or belt of broken bricks or kunkur—a breadth of three or four feet is quite sufficient for the purpose.—_Dr. Norman Chevers._

2. Be careful, especially during the wet season, to keep the verandahs, &c., free from frogs: a frog is a temptation which a snake has little or no power to resist.—_Dr. Norman Chevers._ The same remark is equally applicable to rats.

3. In the cold season, if you see a snake coiled up or in an apparently lifeless state in an open, well-frequented road or pathway, be careful how you approach him. Should you handle or disturb him roughly, he will in all probability rouse up and bite you. He is only torpid from cold, not dead.—_Dr. Norman Chevers._

4. Have a piece of perforated zinc or tin fitted to the opening made for the purpose of carrying off the water out of the bath-room, if it be on the ground floor. A similar piece should be added to the bottom of the bath-room door should it not (as it rarely does) reach the ground beneath.—_Mr. Arthur J. Waring._

5. Discard vegetation, especially thick straggling shrubs like the Rangoon Creeper, close to your house. They are very apt to harbour snakes.

6. Important as are the above "Precautions," they are comparatively of small moment compared with the destruction—extermination if possible—of the snakes themselves. And this can only be efficiently carried out under Government supervision. That this is the only mode of effectually grappling with this gigantic evil, under which thousands of lives are annually sacrificed—the numbers are 19,060 in 1880, and 18,610 in 1881, besides 4568 cattle in the two years—is forcibly set forth by Sir Joseph Fayrer in two able papers in _Nature_, December 28, 1882, and January 18, 1883. Most earnestly is it to be hoped that Government, agreeably to his suggestion, will lose no time in establishing a department, with a responsible chief and subordinate agents, under whom a system of organised, determined, and sustained efforts for the destruction of the snakes shall be adopted and carried out. It would be a public boon if Sir Joseph's two papers were reprinted in pamphlet form, and circulated throughout the length and breadth of India.

In the meanwhile zealous individual effort should be brought to bear in the same direction. To this end money rewards (heading the list with eight annas for a Cobra) should be freely offered to the natives for every dead poisonous snake brought in, but _for poisonous ones alone_. Of these there are life-like coloured plates in Fayrer's _Thanatophidia of India_, and in Ewart's _Poisonous Snakes of India_, one or other of which works is to be found in almost every large station, and which it is highly desirable for every one to make himself acquainted with. One other point remains to be noticed, namely, the necessity of carefully impounding every such dead snake brought in and paid for; otherwise it is likely to do duty a few hours later, or even next day, or it may be made the means of extracting further "buck-sheesh" from one or more of the neighbouring "_Sáhib-lóg!_"

[Footnote 4] Reprinted by permission from Sir Joseph Fayrer's splendid work, _The Thanatophidia of India_. Folio. London: Churchill. 1874.