WATCH THE TEA-KETTLE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3012, 19 February 1881, Page 4

WATCH THE TEA-KETTLE.

A correspondent of the Queensland Times relates the following fact: —" On Monday, the 6th December, I boiled the kettle and filled my teapot with the boiling water. I drank two or three cups of the tea. Next day and the following days up to Wednesday, 15th December, I added as much water from time to time that would keep the kettle full or nearly full. Thus much about feeding the kittle. I partook of the tea made from the water from the kettle two or three times a day from Monday, the lth December, to Wednesday, 15th December. The first symptoms I felt was a soreness of the throat; then followed a disinclination for food; then a slothfulness in the activity of my limbs and a slight paralysis in the calf of my leg, and it has more or loss continued lingering there. Sleepiness came over me on Sunday, the 12th December, I could hardly keep awake during the day. (?n Monday, the 13th, I slept six or eight hours. (I am never in the habit of sleeping more than eight hours in the twenty-four) At 7 o'clock on Monday evening I took a walk of three or four miles, and perspired profusely ; I slept soundly all night. On Tuesday I slept six or seven hours ; I felt light-headed, dizzy, my eyesight became dimmed; I felt a nausea in the stomach; I slept fifteen or sixteen hours in the twenty-four on Tuesday and Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning in emptying the kettle of about two pints of water I happened to put my finger up the spout and discovered, as I thought, thin twigs in it ; but I found a young snake, black, more like roasted than boiled. I then, and not till then, began to trace the symptoms. I had not suspected poison, but as soon as I found the snake the light flashed upon my mind that I had for eight days been imbibing diluted snake poison. Immediately 1 began to take such salts that would both cleanse the intestines and neutralise the poison in the blood, and gradually the sleepiness and paralytic effects began to subside."