Be it remembered always that death following snake bite is not
necessarily the same thing as death from snake bite. Error in
treatment plays no small part in vitiating the statistics. For
"error" read "whisky." Whoever is primarily responsible for the
hoary superstition that liquor in huge doses is useful in snake
poisoning has many a life to answer for. Apart from any
adventitious aid whatsoever, whether from a snake or any other
source, a whole bottle of raw whisky forced down the throat of a
man unaccustomed to alcohol is pretty likely to kill him, and is
absolutely certain to cause grave poisoning. Add to this that it
is given, often, in such a manner that the reaction from it comes
contemporaneously with the heart collapse caused by the venom,
and a telling commentary upon the method is suggested. It is a
question whether alcohol should ever be given in such cases
without the advice of a physician. Certain it is that it should
not be poured into the victim in quantities limited only by the
flask-contents of the bystanders.
Several years ago I saw two interestingly contrasted cases of
copperhead bite. The first patient was a powerful, full-blooded,
temperate, Irish day-laborer who, while road-mending, was bitten
on the back of the hand between two fingers. His fellows hustled
him off to a room over a neighboring saloon, where they proceeded
to administer the classic treatment. Before the doctor arrived
they had introduced a quart and a half of whisky into a stomach
unused to anything stronger than beer in small quantities. Six
hours later, when I saw the man through the wreckage of chairs,
tables, and bedding, four battered friends were trying to hold
him down. They thought he was having convulsions from the snake
venom. He wasn't. He was having delirium tremens from the whisky.
His arm and shoulder were purple and swollen. Later he collapsed.
"Will he die?" I asked the doctor.
"He won't die of the bite, but I think he will of the whisky,"
replied the disgusted practitioner.
But he didn't. His splendid physique pulled him through. It was
long, however, before he wholly recovered from the effects of the
two poisons.
This was in a Hudson River town. Only a few miles away a negro
boy, shortly after, was struck by a copperhead on the bare leg.
The wound was a deep, double-fanged puncture. While the boy's
father rushed for whisky, his mother ran for the doctor. The
doctor got there first. He opened up the wound and rubbed in
permanganate of potash to oxidize the venom and destroy its toxic
properties. When I talked with the boy, two days later, he was
hobbling about on a crutch, and the swelling had almost subsided.
Setting the boy's lesser age and resistant power against the fact
of the laborer's being bitten in a worse place (for crotaline
venom is much more effective in an upper limb or extremity than
in a lower), we have a fairly illustrative instance of the
relative merits of alcoholic and non-alcoholic measures.