Introduction
YET another rattlesnake, that of Brazil, is as deadly, which means is as potent for healing the conditions it can cause, as Crot. hor.: but there are striking differences in their pathogenesis.
Mure’s Materia Medica of the Brazilian Empire, with Provings and the principal Animal and Vegetable Poisons, is the original authority for the uses of this snake-venom: Clarke’s Dictionary reproduces many of the symptoms; and inasmuch as the majority of them are unique, and peculiar to this snake-bite and its provings, we will proceed to detail the most important.
Crot. casc. differs from the commoner rattlesnake, by affecting the tissues in a lesser degree, but mentality and sensation to a far greater extent. It is evidently less haemorrhagic: but has the same sensitiveness and intolerance of clothing about the body as Crot. hor. and Lachesis It also has liver symptoms and yellowness but not so markedly: and bloody serum drips from nose, whose tip feels drawn up and fastened to the centre of forehead.
It induces clairvoyance and “magnetic” states:-
Sees the spectre of death, as a gigantic black skeleton.
Hears strange voices to left and behind her.
Hurls herself against closed doors: attempts to throw herself out of the window.
Sensation as if one were falling out of bed, even while awake.
Hears nothing: or hears groans.
Sensation of a red-hot iron at vertex.
Brain pressed on by an iron helmet.
Sensation as if something alive were walking about in head in a circle.
Fancies her eyes are falling out.
Blue, dazzling light before eyes.
Eyeball pulled to temple by a thread.
Right eyeball as if drawn out.*
Face red; or yellow.
Paralysis of tongue. Burning, pricking, itching of tongue.
(In Crot. hor. the tongue is enormously enlarged.)
Spitting of black blood.
Taste: salt; of onions; putrid.
Craves snow.
Sensation of an opening in stomach, through which air passes.
Food falls suddenly into stomach like a stone.
Sensation of a peg picking in middle of liver.
Feeling of coldness in stomach after eating.
Thorax encased in iron.
Lancinations like needles in dorsal spine.
Constrictive pain round thyroid.
Pains in jugular veins and carotid arteries; as if blood rises, and a valve were opening.
Sensation of water in chest: as if heart were dipped in liquid.
Sensation of shortening right limb: causes him to limp.
And so on.
