Humanity’s enduring quest for dominion: from snake charmers to antivenom

“ Behold the enemies that beset him without and within, and that are armed for his destruction! The intelligence that appears to [Pg 247] pervade the organic world, and that reaches its conscious expression in the brain of man, is just as manifest in all the forms of animals and plants that are inimical to him, in all his natural enemies,—venomous snakes and beasts of prey, and insect pests,—as in anything else. ”

“ And then, as the other world produces serpents, and vipers, malignant and venomous creatures, and worms, and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world which produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of divers parents and kinds; so this world, ourselves, produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses of all those sorts; venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases, made up of many several ones. ”

“ In the small island of Martinique, the Fer-de-Lance, Lachesis lanceolatus, causes every year the death of about 100 human creatures. Though numerous in species, the poisonous snakes of Ceylon cause a comparatively small mortality—200 per annum.
Modern research has resulted in the discovery of 134 the only effective antidote for snake-venom intoxication: the serotherapic treatment. An animal that has been treated over a length of time with the venom of a poisonous snake, such as a Cobra, yields a serum which is antitoxic towards that venom ”

“ Great as the science is, however, it is yet far removed from perfection; and there are substances so mysterious, subtle, and dangerous as to set the most delicate tests and powerful lenses at naught, while carrying death most horrible in their train; and chief of these are the products of Nature's laboratory, that provides some sixty species of serpents with their deadly venom, enabling them in spite of sluggish forms and retiring habits to secure abundant prey and resent mischievous molestation. ”

“ The eye of man can subdue the lion, the tiger, and the serpent as Jesus subdued the untamable demoniac (Mark 5:4) , “and no man had strength to tame him.” Man has proved his kingship over the other creatures as God gave him dominion (Gen. 1:26) . In many cases animals have become so domesticated that they no longer feel at home elsewhere. ”

“ Beasts, birds, serpents, and some kinds of fishes have been tamed so as to be domesticated; but every kind, particularly των εναλιων, of sea monsters, has not been thus tamed; but all have been subjected to the power of man; both the shark and whale become an easy prey to the skill and influence of the human being. ”

“ Nor has man been content with obtaining dominion over the animal creation alone. Gradually he is mastering the elements and extending his dominion over all the earth. The winds and ocean currents have long been his servants; the lightning bears his messages; the element of fire is made to serve him in a thousand ways; steam propels his chariot; distance he well nigh annihilates; he weighs the earth in his balances; measures the distances of the sun and the stars, tells the substances of which they are composed and the mathematical laws by which they are governed. ”

“ We have, however, to reckon with foes far more subtle and more often met with than the thunder-bolt, the lion, the bear or the electric eel. In some parts of the world, the living things that can poison us are very numerous—venomous snakes, scorpions, countless insects, all ready to pour their poison and acids into our skins. Mankind has learned that alkali will neutralize their acid, and has in these latter days discovered how to manufacture an antivenin, to counteract the venin or venom of the serpents.
We fight chemical injuries by chemical means. ”

“ The honourable gentleman talks of sacrificing the interests of humanity to the interests of science, as if this were a question about the squaring of the circle, or the transit of Venus. This is not a mere question of science: it is not the unprofitable exercise of an ingenious mind: it is a question between health and sickness, between ease and torment, between life and death. Does the honourable gentleman know from what cruel sufferings the improvement of surgical science has rescued our species? ”

“ We are only beginning to appreciate how largely the salvation of mankind must be worked out through physical means. The pestilences, the transmitted diseases, the insanities, the nervous disorders, bred of violated law,—all these and the like curses, which not merely destroy human life but degrade it, are to be fought and extirpated. We must secure for soul-life some fair room and chance as against these pests and tyrants. Here lies the noblest work of science ”

“ The world must learn that credulity is not a virtue and that no question is settled until reason is fully satisfied.
By these means man will overcome many of the obstructions of nature. He will cure or avoid many diseases. He will lessen pain. He will lengthen, ennoble and enrich life. In every direction he will increase his power. He will satisfy his wants, gratify his tastes. He will put roof and raiment, food and fuel, home and happiness within the reach of all.
He will drive want and crime from the world. He will destroy the serpents of fear, the monsters of superstition. ”

“ By pressing down the head with a stick, or seizing it quickly by the tail, American Indians similarly manage the rattlesnakes. Not they alone, however, are skilled in taming these deadly reptiles. Here, at home in England, domesticated Crotali are not unknown. Dr. Stradling thinks they may be rendered as harmless as non-venomous kinds, by a gradual training; and has succeeded in so far taming one that he felt safe in offering it as a gift to even an unskilled non-charmer. ”

“ Those who have to deal with venomous serpents tell us, that with caution and expertness they are not difficult to handle; and this is verified by all who describe the performances of Oriental snake-charmers. Not only cobras with fangs extracted, or mouths sewn up, or composition ‘cerastes’ with artificial horns fastened on to the heads of harmless snakes, but those with perfect fangs and well-filled poison glands, are handled with equal facility. ”

“ The food consists mostly of lizards, occasionally of slow-worms or small snakes, more rarely of voles or mice, even shrews, which are seized, constrictor-like, and crushed by the coils of the body. O. von Tomasini has observed one swallowing a Coluber longissimus as large as itself.
In Central Europe this snake becomes active towards the end of March or beginning of April, and retires in September or October. It does well in captivity, and becomes very tame. It is one of the most intelligent of snakes, second to none in educability; 202 it can be trained to feed in the hand of its master. ”

“ One very venomous patient was so covered with sores that the keeper’s only resource was to throw the lotion all over the reptile.
‘Why not let the odious serpent die, or kill it at once?’ some will exclaim. Well, in the first place, many snakes cost large sums of money to purchase; secondly, humanity as well as economy demands that their sufferings should be allayed wherever possible. And in return, they frequently reward such care by recovering and entertaining the visitors, climbing with renewed vigour about their cages. ”

“ Here, and all along the coasts, the people are in the habit of inoculating themselves with the poison of the rattlesnake, which renders them safe from the bite of all venomous animals. The person to be inoculated is pricked with the tooth of the serpent, on the tongue, in both arms, and on various parts of the body; and the venom introduced into the wounds. An eruption comes out, which lasts a few days. Ever after, these persons can handle the most venomous snakes with impunity; can make them come by calling them, have great pleasure in fondling them ”

“ When inoculated into frogs it produces œdema and hæmorrhage; if injected into warm-blooded animals it causes necrosis. In sufficiently strong doses it kills by arresting respiration. Its effects strongly resemble those produced by Viperine venoms. This venom, if attenuated by being heated at 50° C. and injected into mammals, vaccinates them and leads to the formation in their blood of antitoxic substances, which are capable of preventing intoxication by salamander-venom, and, curiously enough, also confer immunity against viper-venom and the serum of the common snake. ”

“ You see how he is mocked by Paul, so that, like the child in prophecy, he lays his hand on the hole of the asp, and the serpent injures him not; he draws him out of his hiding-places, and makes of his venom a spiritual antidote, so that what is venom becomes a medicine, the venom serves to the destruction of the flesh, it becomes medicine to the healing of the spirit. For that which hurts the body benefits the spirit. ”

“ Men who have been wounded can, for a time, hide from fellow-travellers their mortal hurt. They keep on the march and make shift to look like others. Then the madness reveals itself. Words are spoken, deeds are done, that show the vile inoculation taking effect. By-and-by there is another moral death. Humanity may well fear the power of evil thoughts, of lusts, of envious feelings, that serpent-like attack and madden the soul ”

“ In the laboratory of science you find the great men of our time plotting how to destroy space to kill pain, abolish disease, take contagion captive, and make the evil spirits of corruption and decay the servants and slaves of man. ”

“ In experiments we are able to eliminate all these factors, and to follow in an animal inoculated with a known quantity of venom the whole series of phenomena of poisoning, the intensity of which can be graduated. ”

“ Every Creature is good, and if any Branch of the Creation be hurtful to another, ’tis the Effect of moral Evil, and not any necessary Consequence arising from their Creation.
This noxious Quality in Serpents, is God’s Creature, and must answer some valuable Purpose, tho’ concealed from an Eye blinded by the Venom of Sin. Nor must we forget that they seldom hurt their Fellow-Creatures, but when they are provok’d; and when they hurt, they present us with a healing Remedy, that is, the volatile Salt of Vipers, which if rubbed into the Wound, has been generally applied with Success. ”

“ Krefft, speaking of the confusion of vernaculars in Australia, also says: ‘To make a work on ophiology useful to all, co-operation is necessary; and as a good, sound English name is prefixed to every species, it is to be hoped that such name will, if possible, be retained.’ He is referring more particularly to the ‘Diamond snake,’ which on the mainland is the harmless Python molurus, and in Tasmania the venomous Hoplocephalus superbus, with very broad scales. ”

“ In Wallace’s Travels in the Amazon we read: ‘Hanging up under the eaves of our shed was a dried head of a snake which had been killed a short time before. It was a Jaráraca, a species of Craspedocephalus, and must have been of formidable size, for its poison fangs, four in number, were nearly an inch long.... The bite of such would be certain death.’
With this picture of a large Brazilian serpent, drawn by such an authority as Wallace, one read in Ogilvy’s dictionary: ‘Jararaca. A species of serpent in America, seldom exceeding eighteen inches in length ”

“ Hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the pelican nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena can talk with shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a certain tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses of science equally valuable. ”

“ In India similar kinds of experiments were not attended with success; leading to the conclusion that the Indian snakes were more deadly than those in Australia. Climate, latitude, season, and many other circumstances affect the virulence of snakes, as we may here repeat. The ‘Brown’ or ‘Tiger snake’ (Hoplocephalus curtus) , the ‘Black snake’ (Pseudechis porphyriacus) , Hoplocephalus superbus, and some other of the larger venomous kinds within the tropics are thought to be equal in virulence to the Indian ones of the same bulk in the same season. ”

“ Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. ”

“ Space has been annihilated by railroads; by the help of steam continents are united; the electric telegraph is binding the nations in one. And now the genius of Christianity begins more signally to reveal itself as a power acting on the social life of man. The forms and conditions of his earthly lot are being wonderfully transformed and improved. Science is emancipating labor, and constantly overcoming the sources of human suffering. Hygienic science is preserving life and extending the term of human existence. Mankind is rising above the sphere of mere law, into the sphere of noble love. ”

“ Scarcely a Nation upon Earth, but he has tempted to the grossest Idolatry, and in particular got himself to be worshipped in the hideous Form of a Serpent.
The Almighty foreseeing this general Delusion, guarded the World against it, by inspiring Men with the greatest Aversion to that venemous Creature, and yet was the Tempter ador’d in most places under the Appearance of a Serpent. If you say, that Men worship other Creatures; I answer, Those are beneficial to Mankind, and not so odious and hurtful as those who carry Poison in their Tails and Teeth. ”

“ So being depraued or corrupted, it passeth all the humors of our bodie, in venom and malignitie. For it must needs be a vehement and an impure cause that shal corrupt so pure a substance, which would easily resist any weake assault: and a substance so pure and full of spirits as this is, must needes proue most malitious vnto the bodie when it is corrupted. And therefore it is compared to the venom of a serpent, a Scorpion, a Torpido, a madde dogge, &c. which in a small quantitie is able to destroy or depraue all the faculties of our bodies at once. ”