[Footnote 2: On the authority of N.A. Taylor and H.F. McDaniels.]
As the first blow commonly exhausts the receptacle of the duct, a second (the venom being more or less mingled and diluted by the salivary secretion) is comparatively less fatal in results; and each successive repetition correspondingly inoffensive until finally nothing but pure mucus is ejected. Nevertheless, when thoroughly aroused, the reptile is enabled to constantly hurl a secretion, since both rage and hunger swell the glands to enormous size, and stimulate to extraordinary activity--a fortuitous circumstance to which many an unfortunate is doubtless indebted for his life. The removal of a fang, however, affects its gland to a degree that it becomes almost inoperative, until such a time as a new tooth is grown, and again calls it into action, which is commonly but a few weeks at most; and a person purchasing a poisonous serpent under the supposition that it has been rendered innocuous, will do well to keep watch of its mouth lest he be some time taken unaware. It may be rendered permanently harmless, however, by first removing the fang, and then cauterizing the duct by means of a needle or wire, heated to redness; when for experimental purposes the gland may be stimulated, and the virus drawn off by means of a fine-pointed syringe.
In what the venom consists more than has already been described, we are not permitted to know. It dries under exposure to air in small scales, is soluble in water but not in alcohol, slightly reddens litmus paper, and long retains its noxious properties. It has no acrid or burning taste, and but little if any odor; the tongue pronounces it inoffensive, and the mucous surface of the alimentary track is proof against it, and it has been swallowed in considerable quantities without deleterious result--all the poison that could be extracted from a half dozen of the largest and most virile reptiles was powerless in any way to affect an unfledged bird when poured into its open beak. Chemistry is not only powerless to solve the enigma of its action, and the microscope to detect its presence, but pathology is at fault to explain the reason of its deadly effect; and all that we know is that when introduced even in most minute quantities into an open wound, the blood is dissolved, so to speak, and the stream of life paralyzed with an almost incredible rapidity. Without test or antidote, terror has led to blind, fanatical empiricism, necessarily attended with no little injury in the search for specifics, and it may be reasonably asserted that no substance can be named so inert and worthless as not to have been recommended, or so disgusting as not to have been employed; nor is any practice too absurd to find favor and adherents even among the most enlightened of the medical profession, who have rung all the changes of the therapeutical gamut from serpentaria[3] and boneset to guaco, cimicifugia, and _Aristolochia India_ to curare, alum, chalk, and mercury to arsenic; and in the way of surgical dressings and appliances everything from poultices of human fæces,[4] burying the part bitten in fresh earth,[5] or thrusting the member or entire person into the entrails of living animals, to cupping, ligatures, escharotics, and the moxa.