Serpents in Therapeutics.--Snakes and portions of snakes have been prominent features of deterrent therapeutics at all times. Headaches were cured by wrapping a dead snake around the head, or by the touch of a snake's skin, and sore throat by wearing a snake's skin around the throat at night. This seems one degree better than the custom, still common, of wrapping the stocking, that has been worn during the day, around the neck. In the chapter on Graves Disease, the use of the touch of a snake, or of a snake's skin worn around the neck, is mentioned. Girdles made of snake's skin or snakes themselves, were supposed to be good for colic and for various internal troubles, and were sometimes, among barbarous peoples, a sovereign remedy for the ills of pregnancy and assured the woman a safe delivery and an easy labor. Undoubtedly they lessened dreads by suggestion and the effort necessary to overcome repugnance. Some of the symptoms of the menopause have been cured in the same way. Rattlesnake oil has had a special reputation among mountainous people, where the snakes abounded, for the pains and aches of the old, and the vague joint discomfort, sometimes spoken of as rheumatic, but really due to various individual conditions. It is probable that in most cases the oil thus employed was not extracted from the rattlesnake, but was some ordinary oil palmed off under that name, and having its special effectiveness because of the thought associated with it. Various portions of serpents are still in use, sometimes in the hands of physicians, though usually in popular medicine. I knew a physician in a small inland city who had a great local reputation for curing external eye troubles, and who owed not a little of it to the fact that the people in his neighborhood thought that he used rattlesnake oil as one of the ingredients for his strongest prescriptions. He was supposed to be able to dissolve even cataract by his remedies, and there is no doubt that in many cases of chronic indolent ulcer of the eye he was able to bring about a cure sooner, and have it last longer, than those of the regular profession who had not the advantage of this popular faith. He was careful to buy rattlesnakes from certain of the mountain people, who killed and brought them to him and who advertised the fact that they had such commissions from him. The stories were made all the more interesting by the fact that the doctor would not purchase dead rattlesnakes. They must be brought to him alive, since the therapeutic virtues can only be extracted immediately after death. A mountaineer with a couple of live rattlesnakes with him is always an interesting object and a fine {66} advertisement. One would like to know what the doctor did with the snakes--that is, how he disposed of them without suspicion. Homeopathic physicians still have lachesis-viper venom in their pharmacopeia. Their remedies, however, if they really follow the dilution principle of their founder, can