Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1882 — Snake Juice. [ARTICLE]

Snake Juice.

Recent inve>ligations have established the fact t hat the venom of snakes is not an exceptional and anomalous product, but merely an intensified condition of ordinary saliva, and it is still more remarkable to find that a modification of saliva, even in human beings may constitute a virulent poison. There are many well authenticated instances of death resulting from the bites of animals not ordinarily considered vene-mous-f-eats, for instance; and instances have been known in which a bite from a human being has been followed by death Jrom poisoning, just as would have been the case with some venemous reptile. Violent agitation, i# has been observed, seems to impart this fatal quality to the saliva of men or animals, and M. Pasteur has recently ‘‘cultivated” the poison erf the human saliva to such a point as to develop the toxic symptoms of the serpent poisons in small birds. Even in its normal condition saliva is said to be akin to poison, one of its functions being to destroy the molecular life of the substance eaten. It is thought that all violent agitation and exertion involve an abnormal waste of tissue and an excessive production of the principle which renders saliva poisonous.