The native population of India, in spite of the contrary accepted opinion, are remarkably free from resort to nostrums that lay claim to being antidotes.  The person inoculated by the cobra is at once seized by his friends, and constant and violent exercise enforced, if necessary at the point of stick, and severe and cruel (but nevertheless truly merciful) beatings are often a result.  In this we see a direct application, without in the least understanding them, of the rules laid down to secure certain physiological results, as for the relief of opium and morphia narcosis, which serpent poisoning almost exactly resembles.  The late Doctor Spillsbury (Physician-General of Calcutta),[10] while stationed at Jubulpore, Central India, was informed late one evening that his favorite horse keeper had just been dangerously bitten by a cobra of unusual size, and therefore more than ordinarily venomous.  He at once ordered his gig, and in spite of the wails and protestations of the sufferer and his friends, with whom a fatal result was already a foregone conclusion, the doctor caused his wrists to be bound firmly and inextricably to the back of the vehicle; then assuring the man if he did not keep up he would most certainly be dragged to death, he mounted to his seat and drove rapidly away.  Three hours later, or a little more, he returned, having covered nearly thirty miles without cessation or once drawing rein.  The horse keeper was found bathed in profuse perspiration, and almost powerless from excessive fatigue. Eau de luce, an aromatic preparation of ammonia, was now administered at frequent and regular intervals as a diffusible stimulant, and moderate though constant exercise enforced until near dawn, when the sufferer was found to be completely recovered.

  [Footnote 10:  London Lancet.]

The value of violent and profuse cutaneous transpiration, thereby securing a rapidly eliminating channel for discharging poison from the system, is well known; in no other way can action be had so thorough, speedy, and prompt.  Captain Maxwell[11] tells us it was formerly the custom among the Irish peasantry of Connaught, when one manifested unmistakable evidences of hydrophobia, to procure the death of the unfortunate by smothering between two feather beds.  In one instance, after undergoing this treatment, the supposed corpse was seen, to the horror and surprise of all who witnessed it, to crawl from between the bolsters, when he was found to be entirely free from his disorder; the beds, however, were saturated through and through with the perspiration that escaped the body in the intensity of his mortal agony.  More recently a French physician,[12] recognizing the incubatory stage of rabies in his own person, resolved upon suicide rather than undergo its attendant horrors.  The hot bath was selected for the purpose, with a view of gradually increasing its temperature until syncope should be induced, which he hoped would be succeeded by death.  To his