The patient should take a vomit of _ipecacuanha_ (S) _one scruple_; and a few drops of the essential _oil_ of _peppermint_ (U), on a lump of sugar, and dissolved in water, which should be repeated after the operation of the vomit as often as occasion requires. The fat of a rattle snake, is accounted a sovereign specific, if applied immediately to the wounded part, and the patient drinking a decoction made of _snakeroot_. The same remedy here recommended to the bite of a rattle snake, (namely, sucking the fresh made wound) is also recommended to all other venomous bites. The _viper_, the _adder_, the _santapea_ or _scolopandra_, the _scorpion_, _tarantula_, &c. That oil is an antidote, (or as we may say a poison) to all these venomous animals is evident from their expiring in great agony, when oil is poured on them; but whether this effect is because of the penetration it has on their bodies, or annihilating their poison, is as yet undetermined. I was once told a secret for the sting of a scorpion, avered to have been experienced, by a commander of a ship, trading to the bay of Honduras, viz. that the part stung by a scorpion should be touched with the glans of the penis, which would immediately draw out the poison, without effecting the glans that touched it; and it differs not, whether the patient himself or any other person does it.——If there is any virtue in this, I own it is beyond my comprehension.——I thought proper however to mention it, though I cannot advise it as a safe experiment, unless farther confirmed by those who have actually experienced it. I have however a great opinion of mercurials in such exigencies; and would advise recourse to be had to it immediately, both external as well as internal; this we are at least assured of, it cannot be attended with danger. ------------------------------------------- SECT. VII. _Of the Bite of a mad Dog_ There are many surprizing things in nature, in so much, that ocular demonstration can only convince us of their existence. Amongst those wonderful phenomenons, the direful effect of the bite of a mad dog is equally astonishing as it is melancholy. That dogs and wolves are more liable to madness of this kind, called the _Rabies_, is because of their deficiency of external perspiration; and are obliged to supply that defect with their open mouth and their lolling-out the tongue; whence their blood is subject to become overheated, and thence generate a malignant inflammation, which infects the saliva with this direful poison. But the astonishment is, why it should have so very powerful a contagion as to infect the mass of blood of every animal that receives the least atom of it? Yet so it is, confirmed by sad experience.