Coupin then turned out from the chatty in which it was imprisoned a medium-sized cobra, and amused himself for a few moments by teasing it. Irritated by this sport, the snake reared itself up, hissed, and struck at its aggressor several times, as though it would bite him; but, at each dart, Coupin stopped it with his hand and gaze, and the snake remained fascinated, with open mouth, hesitating to drive home its fangs. At one moment the snake even crawled up to the native’s outstretched hand, and appeared to lick it: it was evident that the animal’s only intention was to defend itself, not to attack. Coupin, however, was bent on getting bitten, and, by dint of exciting the snake, the latter became so exasperated that, with hood dilated, it struck at the snake-charmer’s right hand and drove in its fangs. The man quietly raised his arm, to allow it to be clearly seen that the cobra had a firm hold; then, forcing the animal to let go, he came to us to prove that he was really bitten. There were two bleeding spots, 6 millimetres apart, in the centre of the fourth intermetacarpal space of the right hand. The time was exactly 4.40 p.m. The snake, which was immediately killed, was still able to yield twelve drops of venom, when lateral pressure was applied to its glands. Coupin walked towards a shrub of the kind mentioned above, which he had planted that very morning in the courtyard of the hospital,[170] plucked some leaves from it and began to chew them, making rather a wry face, for he said that they were very bitter. He then seemed to meditate for a few moments before the shrub. We asked him whether he was afraid, but he stoutly denied it, declaring that this was not his first experience, and that indeed he had been bitten by cobras so often that he could not remember the first occasion. We endeavoured to discover whether he was not rendered immune, as Indian snake-charmers are reputed to be, by inoculating themselves subcutaneously with increasing doses of venom, according to a principle to a certain extent analagous to that on which the preparation of antivenomous serum is based. He, however, assured us that he knew nothing about such practices, and that the properties of the plant in question had always sufficed to cure him without other treatment. Such was his confidence in his specific that, before the cobra was killed, he suggested to our hospital-warder that he should allow himself to be bitten in his turn, in order to render the experiment still more conclusive, adding that his own assistant would be the subject at the next demonstration.