Among the dusky millions of India Dr. Fraser’s discovery will create no “catholic ravishment” because they will not hear of it.  And if they did hear of it they would regard his labours as misapplied and the result as superfluous.  For the Hindu has never shared the Englishman’s opinion that there is no cure for snake-bite.  On the contrary, he is assured that there are not one or two but many specifics for the bite of every kind of snake, known to those whose business it is to know them.  If they are not invariably efficacious, it is for the simple reason that if a man’s time has come to die he will die.  But if his time has not come to die they will not fail to cure him, and since no man can know when he is bitten whether his time has come or not, he will lay the odds against Fate by trying, not one or another of them, but as many as he can hear of or get.  Some of them are drastic in their effects, and so it too often proves that the poor man’s time has indeed come, for though he might survive the snake he succumbs to the cure.

It is many years now since the news was brought to me one day that a man whom I knew very well had been bitten by a deadly serpent and was dying.  He was a fine, strongly built young fellow, a Mohammedan, in the employ of a Parsee liquor distiller, in whose godown he was arranging firewood when he was bitten in the foot.  Without looking at the snake he rushed out and, falling on his face on the ground, implored the bystanders to take care of his wife and children as he was a dead man.  The news spread and all the village ran together.  The man was taken to an open room in his employer’s premises and vigorous measures for his recovery were set on foot, in which his employer’s family and servants, his own friends and as many of the general public as chose to look in, were allowed to take part.

First of all, some jungle men were called in, for the man of the jungle must naturally know more about snakes than other men.  These were probably Katkurrees, an aboriginal race, who live by woodcutting, hunting and other sylvan occupations.  They proved to be practical men and at once sucked the wound.  An intelligent Havildar of the Customs Department, who chanced to be present, then lanced the wound slightly to let the blood flow, and tied the leg tightly in two places above it.  This was admirable.  If what the jungle men and the Havildar did were always and promptly done whenever a man is bitten by a snake, few such accidents would end fatally.

But this poor man’s friends did not stop there.  A supply of chickens had been procured with all haste, and these were scientifically applied.  This is a remedy in which the natives have great faith, and I have known Europeans who were convinced of its efficacy.  The manner of its application scarcely admits of description in these pages, but the effect is that the chickens absorb the poison and die, while the man lives.  The number of chickens required is a gauge of the virulence of the serpent, for as soon as the venom is all extracted they cease to die.  Nobody, however, could tell me how many chickens perished in this case.  They were all too busy to stop and note the result of one remedy while another remained untried.  And there were many yet.