Taking circumstantial and pathological evidences into consideration, the hope of the person thus poisoned rests solely upon lack of vitality in the serpent and its venom, and in his personal idiosyncrasies, habits of life, condition of health, etc., and the varied chapters of accidents. _To look for a specific, in any sense of the word, is the utmost folly!_ The action of the poison and its train of results follow inoculation in too swift succession to be overtaken and counteracted by any antidote, supposing such to be a possible product, even if administered hypodermically. We have evidence of this in iodic preparations, iodine being the nearest approach to a perfect antidote that can be secured by mortal skill, inasmuch, if quickly injected into the circulation, it retards and restrains the disorganizing process whereby the continuity of the blood corpuscles is lost; moreover, it is a marked antiseptic, favors the production of adhesive inflammation, whereby lymph is effused and coagulated about the bitten part, and absorption checked, and the poison rendered less diffusible. But when a remedy is demanded that shall restore the pristine form, functions, and energy of the disorganized globules, man arrogates to himself supernal attributes whereby it becomes possible not only to save and renew, _but to create life_; and we can scarce expect science or even accident (as some expect) to even rival Nature and set at defiance her most secret and subtle laws. Such, however, is the natural outcropping of an ignorant teaching and vulgar prejudice that feeds and clothes the charlatan and ascribes to savage and uncultured races an occult familiarity with pathological, physiological, and remedial effect unattainable by the most advanced sciences; and whereby the Negro, Malay, Hindoo, South Sea Islander, and red man are granted an innate knowledge of poisons and their antidotes more than miraculous. A reward of more than a quarter of a century's standing, and amounting to several thousand pounds, is offered by the East India Government for the discovery of a specific for the bite of the cobra, and for which no claims have ever been advanced; and the "snake charmers" or jugglers in whom this superior knowledge is supposed to center are so well aware of the futility of specifics, and the risk to which they are subjected, that few venture to ply their calling without a broad-bladed, keen-edged knife concealed about the person as a means of instant amputation in case of accident. Medical and scientific associations of various classes, in Europe, Australia, America, even Africa, and the East and West Indies, have repeatedly held out the most tempting lures, and indulged in exhaustive and costly experimentation in search of specifics for the wounds of vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes, and the general horde of venomous reptiles; and all in vain. Even the saliva of man, as well as certain other secretions, is at times so modified by anger as to rival the venom of the serpent in fatality, and it has no specific; and a careful analysis of the pathological relations of such poison proves that further experimentation and expectation is as irrational as the pursuit of the "philosopher's stone."