Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations.

  • Pehr Kalm
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kalm's account of his visit to England : on his way to America in 1748 / translated by Joseph Lucas ; with two maps and several illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    at them, då en käpp sattes åt dem, or when some one poked their heads with the end of his stick they never bit at the stick. Some of the more forward of the small crowd, sometimes dared to take hold of them without the snakes attempting to bite them: whence there seemed to be reason to believe that this man had clipped off the teeth with which they [T. I. p. 4°5-H bite. Such were our opinions about this, to-day. The following day Dr. Mitchel paid him highly, when he made known to Dr. Mitchel in what his art consisted, that he could so carelessly handle the vipers ; viz.: in this, that when he had caught one of them fast, he had cut off the two large teeth, which they, as a cat with its claws, can shoot out and bite with, or draw back. After they have lost them, they can do no further harm. He related that sometimes when he had caught them, he had been bitten by them, but that his antidote for that had been Snake- Oil, Onn-olja, which he had made in this way, that he had boiled the snake-fat, Orm-ister, to oil, which oil he constantly carried with him in a glass bottle, and when he was bitten, he smeared himself with this oil over the place where he had been bitten, when he had no further harm from it, after he had merely rubbed in the oil.* * in M. Morin’s Reptiles et Poissons, 144 pp-, Paris, 8vo., is pp. 62-3 an “ Addition a 1’article de la Vipere Commune” consisting of two extracts from Valmont de Bomare, a contemporary of Kalm, of which the second is “Remedes contre la morsure de la Vipere. Les remedes vulgaires “ contre la morsure de la viphre (p. 63) sont extérieures et interieures. Les “ extcrieures sont de lier promptement, si l’on peut, la partie au-dessus de la “ morsure, to tie up if possible the part above the bite ; d approcher le plus pres “decette morsure un morceau de fer rougi au feu, io hold a piece of red hot “ iron close to the bite, ou de brftler sur la plaie un peu de poudre ä canon, or '■ to burn a liltle gunpowder on the wound, ou bien enfin de scarifier la plaie et “ d’appliquer dessus de l’ail, du sel ammoniac pilés ensembles, to scarify the '■ wound and apply to it a mixture of garlic and sal ammoniac pounded togetkei. “ As an internal remedy, on avale 1’alcali volatile pris ä des doses assez fortes. —(Valmont de Bomare.) [J.L.]
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