Bite Me

Laurence Monroe Klauber was the authority on rattlesnakes and proved it in 1956 with the publication of the monumental Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence On Mankind. This monster came in two volumes and ran to over fifteen hundred pages and could deservedly be known in the herpetology trade as Rattlesnakes, by God. And unless you are in the trade, if there’s anything you want to know about rattlesnakes that does not appear in the book you should probably put it aside and consult a psychiatrist instead.

Most readers (now as then, no doubt) are most interested in knowing just how nasty rattlesnakes are - how well-endowed of fang, how deadly the bite, how quickly the unattended victim will drop dead, and so on. Klauber acknowledges this in his preface, stoically but not grudgingly (there’s nothing grudging about fifteen hundred pages on rattlesnakes). In fact, he is more than happy to indulge such curiosity. Much more. Several hundred pages are devoted to the poison apparatus and biting mechanism of rattlesnakes, as well as some of the things you should and shouldn't do if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having sat on one.

Widespread familiarity with just how dangerous rattlesnake bites were coincided with the widespread invasion of rattlesnake territory, which, in North America, coincided in turn with the invasion of Native American lands. In the eighteenth century, it was thought that various herbs “wrought certain immediate cures” for such bites, but these were “known to the Indians, who sometimes would, but sometimes would not, divulge them to the white man” (depending, perhaps, on whether the white man had come in peace or with horns and cloven hooves). When such cures failed, “the cause was usually attributed by them [i.e., “the Indians”] to some infringement of ceremonial detail, for their treatments often had a mystical basis. The whites were more likely to cite some botanical misidentification.” The situation was not a pleasant one until a more reliable “cure” was proffered, and then the situation, for some, was a very pleasant one indeed, since that “cure” was whiskey, and lots of it.

Throughout the nineteenth century alcohol was routinely “administered” not as a stimulant but as a specific antidote for rattlesnake bite. Alcohol was thought to seek out the venom in the body, be it in the blood or tissues, and destroy or neutralize it. Two corollaries of the theory were, first, that a person showing snake-bite symptoms was obviously "insufficiently supplied with alcohol" and, second, a snake-bite victim "could not become drunk, regardless of the quantity of whiskey imbibed, until that quantity was more than the amount required to neutralize the venom in his system." It was common belief that rattlesnake venom was harmless to a person in a state of intoxication. It was perhaps advisable, therefore, to have a few shots before venturing forth after breakfast and, if actually bitten, you had to get paraletic lest you get paralyzed. And this was received medical opinion. Oh Happy Days.

The quantities of liquor reportedly taken were formidable. One and a half quarts of whiskey for a young girl, two quarts of corn whiskey in twelve hours for a grown man, one half pint of bourbon every five minutes until a quart had been taken, seven quarts of brandy and whiskey in four days, and one quart of brandy and one and a half gallons of whiskey in thirty six hours are reported in the (rudimentary) medical literature. In the latter case, Klauber notes, “The doctor reported (seriously) that the patient was seen next day looking for another rattlesnake to bit him.”

How the theory of direct antidotal effect gained credence among doctors and laymen alike remains a bit of a mystery “since there were no tests to substantiate it.” The proposition, rather, “had its validation in the uncertainties that have authenticated all the folklore remedies of the past - the cure of cases that required no treatment, that recovered despite the treatment rather than with its help.” Because of this, whiskey was used very generally and in large quantities throughout the United States, and it is claimed “the rattler, more than any other cause, made the High Plains country a hard liquor area.” A survey of snake bites in 1908 concluded that alcohol in large doses only added alcohol poisoning to snake poisoning, and it was evident that the party would soon come to an end. The decline of whiskey as a cure began in earnest shortly afterwards, and, when antivenin and an effective incision-suction program became available in the 1920s, it was practically eliminated from methods approved by killjoy physicians. It is estimated that, until this happened, acute alcoholism accounted for five percent of the fatalities attributed to snake bites.

There were other ways to treat rattlesnake bites. Though few were as persistent as the alcohol cure, many were further removed from medical science. Some involved messing around with actual rattlesnakes to varyingly useless degrees: binding a piece of the rattlesnake’s skin to the wound, but only after killing and burning the snake; swallowing the rattler’s heart while fresh, or dried and pulverized and taken in wine and beer; or having the victim grab the snake by the head and tail, and biting it in the middle, whereupon the poison in the person’s mouth will kill the snake and cure the bite (a method that not only doesn’t work but also has the unfortunate side-effect of inviting a few more bites). Another treatment was what is known, for good reason, as “the split-chicken treatment,” where “a live chicken is split and the bleeding flesh is immediately applied to the snake bite as a poultice.” Needless to say, Klauber notes, “not the slightest benefit has ever been shown to result from this cruel method.” Still other folklore treatments survived from “the Old World,” evidencing the slow pace not only of medicine but of human evolution: the saliva of a fasting man; a poultice of melted cheese; eggs in various forms; treatments involving various kinds of excrement; and, last but not least, the scrapings of a crocodile tooth, which begs the question, What is the cure for a crocodile bite?