Ophidians, Zoological Arrangement of the Different Genera Including Varieties Known in North and South America, the East Indies, South Africa, and Australia, Their Poisons, and All That Is Known of Their Nature, Their Galls as Antidotes to the Snake-Veno

Excerpt from Ophidians, Zoological Arrangement of the Different Genera: Including Varieties Known in North and South America, the East Indies, South Africa, and Australia, Their Poisons, and All That Is Known of Their Nature, Their Galls as Antidotes to the Snake-Venom, Pathological, Toxicological, and Microscopical Facts; To
The subject treated in this work has occupied the author's attention and study for many years. When quite young he witnessed the excruciating torments suffered by a person bitten by a rattlesnake, and the question suggested itself to his mind, Can it be possible that such a deadly poison exists in nature without an antidote existing somewhere near it at the same time?
In Bible history, when the Israelites, journeying from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, were visited by the plague of "numberless fiery serpents," Moses, at God's command, caused to be made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that if "a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass he lived." This seems to indicate that the antidote to the poison lies in the snake itself. Following up this idea leads us to the bile or gall as the object of our search.
Experiments prove that its efficacy as an antidote is beyond dispute. A very great number of cures of snake-bites made by preparations of snake-galls place a seal upon the value of this discovery.
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