Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — A Monkey Doctor. [ARTICLE]

A Monkey Doctor.

All previous narratives of intelligent proceedings on the part of animals are thrown into the shade by the following account of a medical monkey, described by the Oriental correspondent of a London journal: He one day saw a monkey holding a snake by the throat and rubbing its head in the dirt, but, as the ground was moist find damp, the Snake was not readily killed by this mode pf punishment. Every now and then the monkey would look most knowingly in the face of the reptile to see if it was dead, and in the course of one of these investigations the monkey received a severe bite. This angered him and he speedily dispatched the snake, hut its coils had hardly relaxed before the monkey reeled and fell prostrate, apparently in all the agonies of death by poison. By this time an aged-looking monkey arrived on the scene, and after examining the body of the snake and the victim he immediately started for some neighboring bushes, where he collected some leaves of the plant known as the clierchita. These he rapidly and skillfully fashioned into a sort of pill, which he administered to his snake-bitten companion, who speedily revived and walked oil' with his physician. The story is declared to come from trustworthy sources. 1