Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1906 — STRANGE SNAKE IN BORNEO. [ARTICLE]

STRANGE SNAKE IN BORNEO.

Site is Followed by Ecstatic Languor F(jr Hours Before Death. ~~‘ Dr. Joab Welstock, of London, who

fias just three years’ tour in Borne'" >nd little known islands in the Northern Pacific ocean, arrived tn New York recently from the Pacific coast, and will sail 1 for England, next Wednesday. His spectalty ls~toxicology and the principal object of hit trip was to study and analyze tha poison of venomous serpents,..“In Borneo,” said Dr. Welstock. ‘1 found a snake, apparently unknown to the majority of students of nature history. I have examined the venom sacs and their Contents of the American rattlesnake, the copperhead, and the smaller variety of vipers, and the numerous family of poisonous snakes in India, chief ©f w'hich is the cobra. The effect of a bite from any one of these is similar —a partial paralysis. jintSDS-Q jthiin circula>tion and death. The bite of the cobra and American . rattlesnake end fatally in ♦bout fifteen or twenty minutes and there is intense physical suffering. “The snake I discovered in Borneo, about 140 miles north of Kini Balu, and which so far as I know has not been classified, is ten inches long, and not much thicker than a lead pencil. The head of the specimen I obtained was three-quarters of an inch in circumference, and the retroverted poison fangs' ’were one-thirteenth of an inch in length. “Its existence is known to only a few of tHe older Dyaks, and up to sixty or seventy years ago, one of these snakes was an heirloom and used exclusively to inflict death on the very old and on the bedridden and helpless. “I did not see any of these human sacrifices, but I experimented on numerous dogs and pigs and was informed that the effect on the human subject is the same. Immediately after the snake struck a pig, the animal’s eyes became, glazed and the body began to shrink, until the skin hung in folds. • The animal suffered no pain apparently, but grunted contentedly and ate as usual. The effect on dogs was similar. Death came quietly within twenty-four hours. “An old Dyak woman told me that she wanted to die by the bite of the peang-pin, as they call it, because death by that method was ecstatic, and that the subject enjoyed the most delightful sensation of restful languor that could be imagined. She nad seen her grandmother, grandfather, and many aged me-mbers of the tribe put to death with the snake bite, and deplored the fact that the Dutch had made it a penal offense to continue the practise. I have no doubt that it is continued secretly. “The peang-pin is the only poisonous snake I know of whose bite is followed by such remarkable physical phenomenon as the shrinking of the tissues. I saw only one specimen in Borneo and it escaped from me or was stolen.” —New York World.