University of Virginia Library

[Introduction]

ROMANCE revels in the peril of the unknown. Lapped about with the armor-plate of civilization, the modern citizen muses relishingly, like a child beguiling himself with ogre tales, upon the terrors which lie just beyond his ken. To his mind,

Avid for sensation, he peoples the remoteness of forest and mountain with malign and destructive creatures, whence has grown up an extensive and astonishing literature of snake and insect poison lore.

"Deadly" is the master word of the cult. The rattlesnake is "deadly." The copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the wholly mythical puff adder. In hardly less degree is the tarantula "deadly," while varying lethal capacities are ascribed to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug, and sundry other forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the slenderest foundations. I don't mean, by this, that these ill-famed species are wholly innocuous. It would be highly inadvisable to snatch a kiss from a copperhead or to stroke a tarantula's fur the wrong way. But one could do it and live to boast of the achievement. Pseudoscience to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no living thing within the boundaries of the United States of America whose bite or sting is sure death or (with one possible exception) even probable death.

There are five varieties of venomous serpents in this country: three of them Crotalids, and two belonging to the Elaps family. The Elaps are rather rare. The Crotalids (rattlesnake, moccasin, and copperhead) are common, and of the widest geographical distribution. Yet, on the basis of actual evidence, the amazing fact stands out that only about eighty persons, so far as is ascertainable, have ever died from snake bite in the United States. Nowhere in the Civil War records does a death from this cause appear, though hundreds of thousands of men were living "on the country," and at a time when the serpent clan was much more numerous than now.

Estimates vary as to the proportion of deaths to bites. Prentiss Willson believes that something over ten per cent. of all persons bitten by venomous snakes in the United States die. As to how many of these succumb, not to the venom, but to the misdirected efforts of misguided friends at treatment—an extremely important differentiation—he lacks the data upon which to base a reckoning. S. Weir Mitchell's figures indicate 8.7 per cent. mortality for rattlesnake bite. This would make the venom about as dangerous as the toxin of typhoid fever, which is not generally regarded as a necessarily "deadly" disease. Other writers go as high as fifteen per cent. for the rattlesnake and as low as one per cent. for the copperhead.

All general estimates seem to me to leave one basic element out of consideration—the unnoted, non-fatal snake bites. That a bite resulting in death will eventually get itself reported is reasonably certain. On the other hand, I am satisfied, from talking with plantation owners in the South, with ranchmen in the West, and with woodsmen and hunters all over the country, that, in the remoter regions, many instances of poisoning by copperheads and the smaller rattlesnakes never attain the dignity of being listed, so insignificant are they in their effects. Were all these to be recorded, I believe that the mortality ratio would fall notably.

Although I have been interested in the subject for many years, I have never met a man

who has seen a fatal case of snake bite. More than this, my friend Mr. Stewart Edward White, a noted hunter and explorer of untrodden ground in regions infested by reptiles, has known of but one case terminating in death which he believes to be authentic. Dr. J. A. Mitchell, of Victoria, Texas, one of the most experienced of field observers, has never met with an instance of fatality from this cause. Dr. Mitchell believes that horses always, and dogs almost always, recover from rattlesnake bite. He confirms, from observation, the mysterious fact that hogs exhibit absolute immunity from the venom.