er on one. The snake gives them a
nip, and scuttles off. They have not seen what sort of snake it is, but
their imagination conjures up the very worst. After the first outcry,
when the whole house is alarmed, the man sits down firmly possessed by
the idea that he is mortally bitten. Gradually his fears work the
effect a real poisonous bite would produce. His eye gets dull, his
pulse grows feeble, his extremities cold and numb, and unless forcibly
roused by the bystanders he will actually succumb to pure fright, not
to the snake-bite at all. My chief care when a case of this sort was
brought me, was to assume a cheery demeanour, laugh to scorn the fears
of the relatives, and tell them he would be all right in a few hours if
they attended to my directions. This not uncommonly worked by
sympathetic influence on the patient himself. I believe, so long as all
round him thought he was going to die, and expected no other result,
the same effect was produced on his own mind. As soon as hope sprang up
in the breasts of all around him, his spirit also caught the contagion.
As a rule, he would now make an effort to articulate. I would then
administer a good dose of sal volatile, brandy, eau-de-luce, or other
strong stimulant, cut into the supposed bite, and apply strong nitric
acid to the wound. This generally made him wince, and I would hail it
as a token of certain recovery. By this time some confidence would
return, and the supposed dying man would soon walk back sound and whole
among his companions after profuse expressions of gratitude to his
preserver.

I have treated dozens of cases in this way successfully, and only seen
two deaths. One was a young woman, my chowkeydar's daughter; the other
was an old man, who was already dead when they lifted him out of the
basket in which they had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood.
I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright
working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is
shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra
bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has
once been fairly injected and allowed to mix with the blood[2].

There is another curious instance of the effects of fear on the native
mind in the common method taken by an Ojah or Brahmin to discover a
suspected thief. When a theft occurs, the Ojah is sent for, and the
suspected parties are brought together. After various _muntra