SOME STRANGE PHYSIC.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19998, 15 January 1927, Page 8

SOME STRANGE PHYSIC.

SNAKES AS MEDICINE. A DOSE OF "SERPENT TEA.” Dried snakes and lizards are still popular remedies in parts of France. As late, as 1889 the dried flesh of the viper was described as a drug in the authorised medical dictionaries. The singularity of some of the “old wives’ ” remedies in certain French provinces does not prevent them from being effective. Sometimes they are more successful than the drugs elaborated by modern chemistry. One doctor from Bcdarieux says that in many houses in his district dried adders are preserved, and when any member of the family catches a cold or suffers from chills and fever, he is given a dose of liquid prepared from pieces of the dried snake boiled in water for a quarter of an hour. This opens the pores and causes the patient to perspire. Pieces of dried snake are also sold by chemists to drive away, among other things, the rosy rash that accompanies measles. In another district peasants treat chills and fever with viper-brandy, and it is related that when Queen Anne of Austria was taken ill with a violent fever in 1663, her attendants were urged to give her powdered viper. “Serpent tea” has always been regarded as a powerful medicament in one district. For a long.tirae the viper formed the base of a popular preparation known as theriac, used as an antidote to bites of poisonous animals. , A • Spanish doctor published in 1781 a memoir in which he discussed the astonishing cures obtained with preparations of lizards. “The patients who used them,” lie said, “experienced a feverish heat accompanied or followed by fainting, perspiration, and sometimes convulsions.” On investigation it was found that the lizard the Spanish doctor used was the common grey wall-lizard found in France in the warm season.