Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1884 — Snake-Bites in India. [ARTICLE]

Snake-Bites in India.

Their thatch and mud houses, with walls often honeycombed by rats, afford a natural shelter to the cobra and krait. The want of light in their houses by night, when nine-tenths of the snake-bites occur; a footstep in the dark; a hand or foot resting over the edge of their low charpoys during sleep—an irresistible temptation to a prowling cobra; the accidental striking or seizure by the hand of a snake while cutting thejr crops, and crop watching by night are among the most common occasions of snake-bite. Often so light is the bite on finger or toe that it is not enough to break sleep, and thus the sleep of life gradually and unconsciously merges into that of death. The poison seems to steal insensibly and painlessly through the system, gradually benumbing .the springs of life, till it brings them to a standstill forever. Nor is there anything left to tell the Cause except the minutest speck, like a flea-bile, only visible to a close examination. In the morning the bitten person may be found either dead or in the last stage of snake-bite poisoning; it may be a dead mother with her living child still clinging to her, drinking in, in the milk, the poison which, even in such a minute quantity, also leaves the child dazed and lethargic for many hours to come. Strange to say, so apathetic are natives (Indian) that often they get bitten and go to sleep again, without thinking more about it, o# the frail chance of the bite being non-poisonous, and so sleep on till their - friends find them, or sleep ceases in death.— All the Year Round.