In all the countries of the globe where poisonous snakes are formidable to man, there are certain individuals who profess to be secure from all ill-effects from the bites of these reptiles, whether because they are immune to venom, or because they possess secrets which enable them to cure themselves when they happen to have been bitten. Not unnaturally these secrets are sometimes turned to profitable account, and the possessors of them generally enjoy considerable popular influence, and are very highly venerated. Intimate relations with the divinities are freely attributed to them.

Among the Romans the jugglers who carried on the profession of snake-charmers and healers of snake-bites were known as Psylli. Plutarch tells us that Cato, who loved not doctors because they were Greeks, attached a certain number of them to the army of Libya. They were accustomed to expose their children to serpents as soon as they were born, and the mothers, if they had failed in conjugal fidelity, were infallibly punished by the death of their offspring. If, on the contrary, the children were lawful, they had nothing to fear from the bites of the reptiles. “Recens etiam editos serpentibus offerebant; si essent partus adulteri, matrum crimina plectabantur interitu parvulorum; si pudici, probos ortus a morte paterni privilegium tuebatur” (Solinus).

The Libyian Psylli of antiquity still have their representatives in Tunis and in Egypt. Clot Bey writes as follows with reference to the Egyptian Psylli:—

“The Ophiogeni, or Snake-charmers, have been renowned from all time. Strabo speaks of them, and Prosper Alpinus was a witness of the singular effects of their art. The majority of modern travellers who have visited Egypt have been equally struck with the freedom with which they handle poisonous reptiles and animals.

“The Psylli go from house to house, calling forth and charming the snakes that they may happen to contain. They claim to attract them by means of a particular power. Armed with a short wand, they enter the chamber to be purged from these venomous guests, make a smacking noise with their tongue, spit upon the ground, and pronounce the following incantation: ‘I adjure you, by God, if you are without or within, to appear; I adjure you, by the greatest of names; if you are obedient, appear! If you disobey, die! die!’ The snake, submissive to this command, departs forthwith, issuing from a crack in the wall or floor.”86

India is pre-eminently the country of snake-charmers. There exists an entire caste of Hindus, called Mal, who are professional catchers and vendors of snakes, but do not perform tricks with them.

The snake-charmers are recruited from among another caste, that of the Sangis or Tubriwallahs of Bengal.

These men, who are usually clothed in yellow robes and wear large turbans, manage the Cobra with really marvellous skill. All travellers who have had the opportunity of crossing India or of touching at a port on the coast or on that of Ceylon have witnessed scenes similar to that described by Natalis Rondot (figs. 90 and 91):—

“Towards six o’clock in the evening a Hindu juggler comes on board. He is poorly clad, and wears a turban decorated with three feathers, and several necklaces of those amulet-sachets called gris-gris in Senegal. In a flat basket he carries a spectacled Cobra-di-Capello.

“This man instals himself on deck; we sit down on the seat provided for the officer of the watch, and the sailors form a circle. The basket is placed on the deck and uncovered; the Cobra is coiled up at the bottom of it. The juggler squats a few paces off and commences to play a slow, plaintive, and monotonous air, with a kind of small clarinet (fig. 92), the sounds of which recall those of the Breton biniou.

“By degrees the snake moves, extends itself, and then assumes an erect posture, but without quitting the basket. It begins to appear uneasy and endeavours to recognise its surroundings; it becomes agitated and irritated, expands and spreads out its hood, breathes hard rather than hisses, and frequently and quickly shoots out its slender forked tongue; several times it makes a violent dart as though to attack the juggler; it frequently trembles, or rather gives sudden starts. The juggler keeps his eyes always fastened upon the snake, and gazes at it with a singular fixed stare. After some time, about ten or twelve minutes, the Cobra becomes less animated, grows quiet, and then sways as though influenced by the slow and monotonous rhythm of the musician; it keeps incessantly darting out its tongue. Little by little it is brought to a sort of somnolent condition. Its eyes, which at first watched the juggler as though in order to take him by surprise, are, to a certain extent, fixed and fascinated by the latter’s gaze. The Hindu takes advantage of this moment of stupefaction on the part of the snake by approaching it slowly without ceasing to play, and touches the head of the Cobra, first with his nose and then with his tongue. Although this takes but an instant the reptile starts out of its sleep, and the juggler has barely time to throw himself backwards so as not to be struck by the snake, which makes a furious dart at him.

“We doubt whether the Cobra still has it fangs, and whether the Hindu incurs any real danger in approaching it. Accordingly we promise our man a Spanish piastre if he will make the snake bite a couple of fowls. A black hen, which struggles violently, is taken and offered to the Cobra, which half rises, looks at the bird, bites it, and lets it go. The fowl is released and runs off terrified. Six-minutes later, by the watch, it vomits, stretches out its legs, and dies. A second fowl is placed in front of the snake, which bites it twice, and the bird dies in eight minutes.”87

Certain jugglers exhibit snakes from which they have taken care to extract the fangs; they offer the animal a piece of cloth or soft stuff into which it drives its poison-teeth, and the fabric is then quickly snatched away in order by this means to break off the poison-fangs that have penetrated it. This operation is repeated at certain intervals with a view to preventing the reserve fangs from coming into use, and the reptiles can then be handled without any danger.

It is unquestionable, however, and I have personally satisfied myself of the fact, that many genuine snake-charmers go through their performances with Cobras whose poison-apparatus is absolutely intact. That they almost always avoid being bitten is due to a perfect knowledge of the habits and movements of these reptiles. Nevertheless, accidents sometimes happen to them, and every year a few of them succumb in pursuit of their calling (see p. 370). Still, it may be asserted that some of them really know how to vaccinate themselves against venom, by making young Cobras bite them from time to time.

It is stated by E. C. Cotes,88 formerly of the Calcutta Museum, that the Indian snake-charmers do not extract the poison-fangs from their snakes. Even though deprived of its fangs, the snake would still be dangerous on account of its other teeth, the punctures of which would provide another channel for the penetration of the venom.

Snake-charmers pretend that they owe their immunity to graduated inoculations. This is not yet conclusively proved; what is better established is that they take the greatest care to avoid being bitten, and that in so doing they display the most remarkable skill.

Even in France we are acquainted with professional viper-catchers, who employ the method of graduated inoculations in order to render themselves immune to the bites of indigenous reptiles. One of these men, who lives near Arbois (Jura), takes good care to get himself bitten, at least once a year, by a young viper; when he forgets this precaution and happens to be bitten, he always feels the effects much more severely.

Fraser89 (of Edinburgh) thinks that the repeated ingestion of small quantities of venom may suffice to confer immunity, and he mentions a certain number of experiments performed by him upon white rats and kittens, from which it would appear that the ingestion of venom, continued for a long time, finally renders these animals absolutely refractory to subcutaneous inoculation with doses of the same venom several times greater than the lethal one. He therefore concludes that this process of vaccination may probably be in use among snake-charmers.

I have submitted this hypothesis to the test of experiment. I succeeded in making adult rabbits, guinea-pigs, and pigeons absorb enormous doses of Cobra-venom by way of the alimentary canal. In this manner I have administered doses as much as a thousand times greater than the lethal one, yet I have never been able to prove that the serum of these animals became antitoxic.

On the other hand, I have succeeded in vaccinating very young guinea-pigs and young rabbits which were still being suckled, by making them absorb, every second day, minimal and certainly innocuous doses of very dilute venom. In the case of young animals, venom is not modified by the digestive juices, and a portion of it is absorbed by the mucous membrane of the intestine. When the dose ingested is suitably reduced they withstand it, and when these ingestions are repeated every second or third day during the first weeks of life, the animals become perfectly vaccinated against doses certainly lethal for controls of the same age and weight. But it is always difficult to push the vaccination far enough for the serum to acquire antitoxic properties, and I have never been able to prove the appearance of the latter.

I think, however, that it ought to be possible to arrive at this result by experimenting upon animals such as lambs, kids, calves, or foals, the intestine of which remains permeable to toxins for a sufficiently long period.

It may be that certain snake-charmers, who claim to possess family secrets which they transmit from father to son, employ an analogous method in order, in their infancy, to confer immunity to venoms upon those of their male children who are to inherit their strange and lucrative profession.

In Mexico, certain Indians called Curados de Culebras know how to acquire the privilege of being able to be bitten by poisonous snakes without the least danger to life, by inoculating themselves several times with the teeth of rattle-snakes.

Dr. Jacolot,90 a naval surgeon, while staying at Tuxpan, made enquiries as to these Curados de Culebras, and was able to satisfy himself that their immunity is an actual fact.

The process of vaccination employed by the natives of Tuxpan is as follows:—A preparatory treatment is necessary. On the very day on which a man is to inoculate himself or get himself inoculated, he takes from 5 to 15 tubers of a plant known by the name of Mano de Sapo (i.e., Toad’s hand, Dorstenia contrayerva, Family UrticaceÆ). These tubers must—and this is absolutely necessary—be administered on a Friday, and always in an odd number, 5, 7, 9, &c., up to 15, according to the tolerance of the subject.

If the plant be gathered on the first Friday in March it possesses its marvellous properties in the highest degree; in this case, even if it be dry, it is still excellent for the preparatory stage of the inoculation.

The physiological effects of mano de sapo are not very marked: the circulation is slightly diminished and a sensation of cold is experienced, but there are no nervous troubles. The subject frequently has attacks of vomiting or nausea. The inclination to vomit must be fought against, for if the plant should happen to be rejected it would be dangerous to submit to the inoculation.

The root of the mano de sapo is usually taken fresh. There is another indispensable precaution: while undergoing this treatment it is necessary to abstain from all sexual intercourse for three days after the first inoculation, for two days after the second, and for one day after the third.

For the inoculation a large snake’s tooth, that is to say, one of the fangs, is employed, and the fangs of the most poisonous snakes, such as the rattle-snake (cuatro narices), are selected. The snake must be killed on a Friday, and the fangs extracted the same day. The same fang may serve for several years!

The inoculation is commenced on the dorsal surface of the left foot; care must be taken to avoid coming into contact with a vein. The skin is torn with the point of the fang, so that it bleeds a little, and the incision is in the shape of a square.

From the left foot the operator passes to the right wrist (anterior surface), then to the right foot (dorsal surface), and left wrist (anterior surface), always changing from one side of the body to the other.

Operations are continued on the left thigh, then on the right arm, right thigh, and left arm; in this way all the limbs are inoculated. On the body an inoculation is made in the centre of the sternum; another is made in the nape, and a final one in the centre of the forehead. The finishing touch is given with the semblance of a square incision in the tongue.

At least seven series of similar inoculations are necessary to protect a man from the spells of the serpent, and at the same time to confer upon him the faculty of curing by suction the bites of the venomous snakes that are most dreaded.

During the whole of the period in which the Indian thus submits to successive inoculations, his health shows no noteworthy derangement. He feels a slight headache and a strange inclination towards alcoholic drinks. But when the moon is at the full, then indeed, an excitement which is dangerous in another way takes possession of him. His cerebral faculties become over-excited, and he feels that his senses are deserting him; his eyes become bloodshot, and he is pursued and tormented by an irresistible impulse to bite. He has itching sensations in his gums, his mouth burns, and salivation is greatly increased. He feels that he is going to give way to the necessity to bite, and then he flees to the woods, where he bites the trees viciously, tears their bark and discharges his venom. His poisonous saliva mingles with the sap, and, surprising phenomenon, the tree withers and dies!

Woe to the man or animal who happens to be bitten by a Curado de Culebra in a fit of passion. The victim will die as quickly as if he had been bitten by a snake!

Almost all the semi-savage people of Guiana, and of the valleys of the Orinoco and the Amazons, as also the tribes of Central Africa and the races of India, possess witch-doctors, who pretend to be in possession of means to preserve themselves from snake-bites, which are just as ridiculous and infallible as the procedure described above.

The archives of a criminal anthropology contain the story of a Lyonnese gold-seeker, who had himself immunised against venom by an aboriginal native of Guiana:91—

“The Indian took, from a bottle which contained several of them, a tooth of the Grage (Lachesis atrox), an extremely poisonous snake, and with it made upon my instep three incisions about 3 centimetres in breadth. He allowed the wounds to bleed for a minute. I then experienced a fainting sensation, and large drops of sweat rolled from my forehead. The wounds were next rubbed with a blackish powder. I have since learnt that this powder was composed of the liver and gall of the animal, dried in the sun and pounded up with the poison-glands. The blood immediately ceased to flow. The Indian chewed some leaves of a tree mixed with this powder, and, applying his lips to the sore, injected into it as much saliva as he could, making an effort as though to inflate a balloon. This completed the operation.

“Since then I have been bitten seven times by different species of very dangerous snakes, such as the Grage, coral-snake, &c., and have never even had an attack of fever. The Galibi, Boni, and Emerillon Indians, the Bosse negroes, and all the aboriginal natives of Guiana employ the same method of procedure. They even pretend that this kind of vaccination is transmissible to their offspring, and that the hereditary immunity is maintained through several generations.”

Some years ago Mons. d’Abbadie communicated to the AcadÉmie des Sciences92 a note from Colonel Serpa Pinto relating to another method of vaccination employed by the natives of Mozambique, which the Colonel himself consented to undergo.

“I was vaccinated,” writes Colonel Serpa Pinto, “at Inhambane (on the East Coast of Africa), among the Vatuas. These people extract the poison of a snake which is known in Portuguese as the Alcatifa (i.e., carpet), and is so called on account of the variegated colour of its skin, which resembles a carpet. I am not acquainted with the means employed in order to obtain the poison, which is mixed with vegetable substances, and forms with the latter a dark brown viscid paste.

“Two parallel incisions, 5 millimetres in length, are made in the skin, and into these is introduced the paste containing the poison. These incisions are made on the arms, near the junction of the radius and ulna with the carpal bones, on the back of the hand, on the back, on the shoulder-blades, and on the feet, near the great toes. After the operation the natives exact an oath that the vaccinated one will never kill a poisonous snake, because they say that henceforth the snake is his intimate friend, and they throw upon him an Alcatifa snake, which does not bite him.

“After undergoing this operation my whole body was swollen up for a week, and I underwent every possible kind of suffering.

“I have never been bitten by any snake, and cannot vouch for the infallibility of this remedy. The Vatuas do so, however, and they never kill a snake.

“A short time after having been vaccinated, I was stung, when in the Seychelle Islands, by a scorpion, which did me no harm. Ten years later, at the time of my journey across Africa, I was stung by another scorpion which hurt me dreadfully, and for a week I thought that I was going to die or lose my arm.”

Mystification and superstitious ideas play, as we see, a very great part in this preventive treatment, which is undergone by the natives of certain countries and snake-catchers or charmers. But it is not very surprising that, thanks to successive and repeated inoculations, a man can succeed in acquiring sufficient immunity to preserve himself from snake-bites.

In ancient times it was even pretended that it was possible for this immunity to be transmitted in certain cases by heredity, and thus we can understand how the profession of snake-charmer was hereditary in certain native families in India or Egypt.

With reference to this subject, Professor Landouzy, in his fine work on serum therapeutics, quotes a passage from “The Pharsalia” of Lucan describing, in the year 60 A.D., the customs of the Psylli, a people encountered by the army of Cato during its sojourn in Africa. This passage is so interesting that I cannot refrain from reproducing it:—

The only scientific conclusion to be drawn from the facts and statements that we have just set before the reader is that, under certain circumstances, man can unquestionably acquire the faculty of resisting intoxication by snake-venom, by conferring upon himself a veritable active immunity by means of repeated inoculations of venom. We shall shortly see that the case is the same with regard to animals.