Almost all the semi-savage people of Guiana, and of the valleys of the Orinoco and the Amazons, as also the tribes of Central Africa and the races of India, possess witch-doctors, who pretend to be in possession of means to preserve themselves from snake-bites, which are just as ridiculous and infallible as the procedure described above. The archives of a criminal anthropology contain the story of a Lyonnese gold-seeker, who had himself immunised against venom by an aboriginal native of Guiana:[91]-- “The Indian took, from a bottle which contained several of them, a tooth of the _Grage_ (_Lachesis atrox_), an extremely poisonous snake, and with it made upon my instep three incisions about 3 centimetres in breadth. He allowed the wounds to bleed for a minute. I then experienced a fainting sensation, and large drops of sweat rolled from my forehead. The wounds were next rubbed with a blackish powder. I have since learnt that this powder was composed of the liver and gall of the animal, dried in the sun and pounded up with the poison-glands. The blood immediately ceased to flow. The Indian chewed some leaves of a tree mixed with this powder, and, applying his lips to the sore, injected into it as much saliva as he could, making an effort as though to inflate a balloon. This completed the operation. “Since then I have been bitten seven times by different species of very dangerous snakes, such as the _Grage_, coral-snake, &c., and have never even had an attack of fever. The Galibi, Boni, and Emerillon Indians, the Bosse negroes, and all the aboriginal natives of Guiana employ the same method of procedure. They even pretend that this kind of vaccination is transmissible to their offspring, and that the hereditary immunity is maintained through several generations.” Some years ago Mons. d’Abbadie communicated to the Académie des Sciences[92] a note from Colonel Serpa Pinto relating to another method of vaccination employed by the natives of Mozambique, which the Colonel himself consented to undergo. “I was vaccinated,” writes Colonel Serpa Pinto, “at Inhambane (on the East Coast of Africa), among the Vatuas. These people extract the poison of a snake which is known in Portuguese as the _Alcatifa_ (_i.e._, carpet), and is so called on account of the variegated colour of its skin, which resembles a carpet. I am not acquainted with the means employed in order to obtain the poison, which is mixed with vegetable substances, and forms with the latter a dark brown viscid paste.