ROMANCE revels in the
peril of the unknown. Lapped about with the armor-plate of civilization, the
modern citizen muses relishingly, like a child beguiling himself with ogre
tales, upon the terrors which lie just beyond his ken. To his mind,
A stone’s throw out on
either hand,
And all the world is
wild and strange.
Avid for sensation, he
peoples the remoteness of forest and mountain with malign and destructive
creatures, whence has grown up an extensive and astonishing literature of snake
and insect poison lore.
"Deadly" is
the master word of the cult. The rattlesnake is "deadly." The
copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the wholly mythical puff
adder. In hardly less degree is the tarantula "deadly," while varying
lethal capacities are ascribed to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug,
and sundry other forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the
slenderest foundations. I don’t mean, by this, that these ill-famed species are
wholly innocuous. It would be highly inadvisable to snatch a kiss from a
copperhead or to stroke a tarantula’s fur the wrong way. But one could do it
and live to boast of the achievement. Pseudoscience to the contrary
notwithstanding, there is no living thing within the boundaries of the United
States of America whose bite or sting is sure death or (with one possible
exception) even probable death.
There are five
varieties of venomous serpents in this country: three of them Crotalids, and
two belonging to the Elaps family. The Elaps are rather rare. The Crotalids
(rattlesnake, moccasin, and copperhead) are common, and of the widest
geographical distribution. Yet, on the basis of actual evidence, the amazing
fact stands out that only about eighty persons, so far as is ascertainable,
have ever died from snake bite in the United States. Nowhere in the Civil War
records does a death from this cause appear, though hundreds of thousands of
men were living "on the country," and at a time when the serpent clan
was much more numerous than now.
Estimates vary as to the
proportion of deaths to bites. Prentiss Willson believes that something over
ten per cent. of all persons bitten by venomous snakes in the United States
die. As to how many of these succumb, not to the venom, but to the misdirected
efforts of misguided friends at treatment--an extremely important
differentiation--he lacks the data upon which to base a reckoning. S. Weir
Mitchell’s figures indicate 8.7 per cent. mortality for rattlesnake bite. This
would make the venom about as dangerous as the toxin of typhoid fever, which is
not generally regarded as a necessarily "deadly" disease. Other
writers go as high as fifteen per cent. for the rattlesnake and as low as one
per cent. for the copperhead.
All general estimates
seem to me to leave one basic element out of consideration--the unnoted,
non-fatal snake bites. That a bite resulting in death will eventually get
itself reported is reasonably certain. On the other hand, I am satisfied, from
talking with plantation owners in the South, with ranchmen in the West, and
with woodsmen and hunters all over the country, that, in the remoter regions,
many instances of poisoning by copperheads and the smaller rattlesnakes never
attain the dignity of being listed, so insignificant are they in their effects.
Were all these to be recorded, I believe that the mortality ratio would fall
notably.
Although I have been
interested in the subject for many years, I have never met a man who has seen a
fatal case of snake bite. More than this, my friend Mr. Stewart Edward White, a
noted hunter and explorer of untrodden ground in regions infested by reptiles,
has known of but one case terminating in death which he believes to be
authentic. Dr. J. A. Mitchell, of Victoria, Texas, one of the most experienced
of field observers, has never met with an instance of fatality from this cause.
Dr. Mitchell believes that horses always, and dogs almost always, recover from
rattlesnake bite. He confirms, from observation, the mysterious fact that hogs
exhibit absolute immunity from the venom.
Be it remembered always
that death following snake bite is not necessarily the same thing as death from
snake bite. Error in treatment plays no small part in vitiating the statistics.
For "error" read "whisky." Whoever is primarily responsible
for the hoary superstition that liquor in huge doses is useful in snake
poisoning has many a life to answer for. Apart from any adventitious aid
whatsoever, whether from a snake or any other source, a whole bottle of raw
whisky forced down the throat of a man unaccustomed to alcohol is pretty likely
to kill him, and is absolutely certain to cause grave poisoning. Add to this
that it is given, often, in such a manner that the reaction from it comes
contemporaneously with the heart collapse caused by the venom, and a telling
commentary upon the method is suggested. It is a question whether alcohol
should ever be given in such cases without the advice of a physician. Certain
it is that it should not be poured into the victim in quantities limited only by
the flask-contents of the bystanders.
Several years ago I saw
two interestingly contrasted cases of copperhead bite. The first patient was a
powerful, full-blooded, temperate, Irish day-laborer who, while road-mending,
was bitten on the back of the hand between two fingers. His fellows hustled him
off to a room over a neighboring saloon, where they proceeded to administer the
classic treatment. Before the doctor arrived they had introduced a quart and a
half of whisky into a stomach unused to anything stronger than beer in small
quantities. Six hours later, when I saw the man through the wreckage of chairs,
tables, and bedding, four battered friends were trying to hold him down. They
thought he was having convulsions from the snake venom. He wasn’t. He was
having delirium tremens from the whisky. His arm and shoulder were purple and
swollen. Later he collapsed
"Will he
die?" I asked the doctor.
"He won’t die of
the bite, but I think he will of the whisky," replied the disgusted
practitioner.
But he didn’t. His
splendid physique pulled him through. It was long, however, before he wholly
recovered from the effects of the two poisons.
This was in a Hudson
River town. Only a few miles away a negro boy, shortly after, was struck by a
copperhead on the bare leg. The wound was a deep, double-fanged puncture. While
the boy’s father rushed for whisky, his mother ran for the doctor. The doctor
got there first. He opened up the wound and rubbed in permanganate of potash to
oxidize the venom and destroy its toxic properties. When I talked with the boy,
two days later, he was hobbling about on a crutch, and the swelling had almost
subsided. Setting the boy’s lesser age and resistant power against the fact of
the laborer’s being bitten in a worse place (for crotaline venom is much more
effective in an upper limb or extremity than in a lower), we have a fairly
illustrative instance of the relative merits of alcoholic and non-alcoholic
measures.
Thirteen cases of death
following rattlesnake and copperhead bite in which satisfactory clinical data
were obtainable, are given by Prentiss Willson. Of the victims, five were young
children, one was a fourteen-year-old boy, one a chronic drunkard, and one a
leper who submitted to the stroke of a captive rattlesnake in the mad hope that
it would cure his affliction. It did--in twenty-four hours. Of the remaining
five, three were dosed with alcohol in large quantities. In several of the
cases, notably those of the children, there seemed to be at least an even
chance of recovery, when the ligatures binding the affected limb were loosened
to relieve the pain, with quickly fatal results. Two of the fatalities were
attributed, not immediately to the venom, but to the secondary blood-poisoning,
this being the case with the only copperhead bite in the list.
Death resulting
typically from crotaline poisoning occurred in two instances, one the
fourteen-year-old boy, who was struck by a large rattlesnake and died in six
hours, despite skilled and prompt medical attendance; the other, a Dr. Post,
into whose veins, it would appear, the poison entered immediately, since a jet
of blood spurted from the wound inflicted by the captive rattlesnake. The man
passed from great agony into coma, from which he never rallied, death ensuing
in five hours after the bite. There is nothing in these data to indicate that a
full-grown man in normal health, and with proper treatment, will succumb to
crotaline poisoning unless the venom enters a vein, direct.
In the matter of the
comparative potency of snake poisons, there are apparent contradictions. In the
order of recorded fatalities, the rattlesnake ranks easily first, with the
water moccasin a rather distant second, and the copperhead a very poor third.
Yet experiments upon animals indicate that moccasin venom is five times as
powerful as rattlesnake, though only three times as powerful as copperhead.
Taking the cobra as the basis of estimate, it requires only twice as much
moccasin venom as it does cobra poison to kill a guinea pig, whereas it
requires six times as much copperhead and ten times as much rattlesnake virus.
Why, then, is the rattler pre-eminent over its more virulent cousins? Probably
for two reasons--the greater amount of venom secreted, and the superior power
with which the rattler drives its fangs home.
Fully as much terror
attaches, in the country districts, to the puff adder or sand viper as to the
rattlesnake or copperhead. This is a suggestive bit of superstition, since
there’s no such thing as an adder or viper on the Western hemisphere and never
has been one, unless it came, carefully pickled, in a jar. What passes for the
supposedly deadly reptile is the common hog-nosed or bull snake. It is about as
dangerous as an infuriated rabbit. But it puts up one of the best
"bluffs" known to natural history. When caught at its favorite
occupation of basking in the open, without convenient avenue of escape, it
flattens its head, and strikes right and left, blowing and hissing with an
aspect much more terrifying than that of the truly venomous species. Then, when
the objects of its fury have taken to trees or adjacent fences, it glides
quietly away into the grass and effaces itself. Any one who has the nerve to
look it between the eyes may uncover its pretense. For by this token may be
known the real Crotalids from the mock: a small but distinct pit between eye
and nostril. Lacking this mark, no ventral crawler in the land of the free need
cause a flutter in the most timid breast, with one notable exception.
Shun, as you would a
rabid dog, a pretty little red-and-black banded serpent about as thick as your
thumb. If any living creature whose habitat is the United States deserves the
epithet "deadly," it is the Elaps. Two species are known; the harlequin
snake, which ranges throughout the Gulf states to Texas and up the Mississippi
River to Ohio, and the Sonoran coral snake, found in the Southwest only. By a
strange perversion of facts, while the harmless hog-nosed snake enjoys a repute
of terror, the Elaps, most dangerous of all American reptiles, is commonly
regarded as harmless. Partly this is due to its slight and graceful prettiness,
partly to its innocent-appearing head, which shows no flattening (the popularly
understood mark of the venomous species), and partly to its lethargic and
peaceful disposition. Experimenters wishing to secure the venom of the Elaps
often find it difficult to rouse the snake to striking wrath.
Very few instances are
known of Elaps bite, but those few unquestionably set this ornamental creature
in a class by itself, among American Ophidia, for "results." Out of
eight well-authenticated cases of Elaps bite, six of the victims died. This is
believed to indicate a falsely large percentage, however, the scientific
estimate of mortality being somewhere between twenty-five and fifty per cent.
A government scientist
tells me of a curious result from coral-snake bite which came under his notice.
The victim, who was handling the reptile preparatory to photographing it,
apparently overstepped the bounds of its habitual forbearance, for it fastened
upon his finger with such determination that it had to be pried off. The man
soon became unconscious, but rallied, and, after three days of dubious
condition, recovered. Every year since, at about the anniversary of the bite,
an ulcer forms upon the finger and the nail sloughs off. I have heard of
similar recurrent effects from crotaline poisoning, but none scientifically
attested, as is this phenomenon.
Before passing from the
subject of snakes, let me make one point clear. While the venomous snakes of
this country are by no means "deadly" in the ordinary sense of the
term, their bite is always serious, both in its immediate effects and in the
possibility of after effects. The bitten person should get to a physician at
once. The immediate treatment is prompt incision and sucking of the wound.
Permanganate of potash for rubbing into the bitten place should always be
carried by persons traveling in a snake-infested country. If the bite is on a
limb, a light ligature will check the spread of the venom. Use whisky
sparingly, if at all, and then only in case of complete collapse.
The local treatments
are most effective while the venom is still around the site of the bite, and
will reduce the injurious effects considerably. But after half an hour or so
the absorption of the venom becomes more general and the local treatments
ineffective. When the venom once enters into general circulation no chemicals
or medication can neutralize its effects, except a specific antivenin, such as
has been prepared by Dr. Noguchi at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.
Antivenin is the only antidote that can counteract the action of venom anywhere
in the body. It finds the venom wherever it is present and neutralizes it there,
without producing any ill effects on the system.
Dissension and
discussion have raged for years about the hideous head of the Gila monster.
This great lizard of the Southwest has been pronounced absolutely deadly by one
set of partisans, and absolutely harmless by another. Somewhere between lies
the truth. If any human being has actually been bitten by a heloderma, the
event has either escaped notice or has been so hedged about with obstructive
legend as to have forfeited scientific credence. But the saurian itself has
been studied and dissected, and its venom has been analyzed. The venom is
related to snake poison, but is neither crotaline nor elapine. From animal
experiments it is thought that it might be fatal to man under unfavorable
conditions. There are no fangs proper. The poison gland is in the lower jaw,
instead of in the upper, as in snakes, and its product is projected through
small ducts which open in the gums outside the teeth. The Gila monster has the
grip of a bulldog. Torture will not loosen its hold, once fastened on. It is
through this intimate contact that the venom works into the wounds.
Fortunately, the lizard
is slow to anger, and prefers flight to battle, so it is likely to be long
before science has an opportunity of studying the effect of its envenomed
jaw-clamp upon man. There are a few vaguely rumored reports of prospectors
having perished, in the desert, of Gila monster poison, but these are so
confused with symptoms suspiciously resembling alcoholic poisoning as to lead
Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, an authority upon the Reptilia, to remark that "a
quart of raw whisky, practically given at one dose, may prove more fatal than
the bite of ten helodermas."
Almost any kind of an
insect bite or sting may prove fatal. So may a pin scratch, if the blood of the
subject be in bad enough condition. There is a well-substantiated case of a
trained nurse who died from blood poisoning following a mosquito bite. Ant bite
has resulted fatally, as has a single sting from the common wasp. No one,
however, considers these everyday insects as "deadly." But substitute
"scorpion" for "ant," and "centipede" for
"wasp," and shrieks of dismay rise from the general throat. Yet perhaps
there is no other variety of harmful creature whose reputation rests upon so
meager a foundation as that of these two.
True, an El Paso report
claims that a man stung by a whip scorpion died in twelve hours; but the
details are so vague as to be in a high degree unconvincing. Dr. Eugene
Murray-Aaron, a witness of unimpeachable scientific competency, describes the
sting, after several personal encounters with the vigorous tropical species, as
no worse than that of a large hornet. Dr. L. B. Rowland, of Florida, says:
"My wife has been stung several times [by the common scorpion]. It is like
a wasp sting, only."
The Mexican scorpion
enjoys an evil repute, which, from personal observation, I consider greatly
exaggerated. Stewart Edward White was so obliging as to afford me excellent
opportunity of judging, in the course of a recent hunting trip which we took
together in a hot and remote Mexican desert. Mr. White, in the process of
disrobing, sat down upon a brown scorpion, an inch and a half long. The
scorpion punctured Mr. White twice. I noted his symptoms. They were chiefly
surprise and indignation. Within half an hour he was asleep, and on the
following day he was riding a mule. The scorpion, however, died.
With respect to the
centipede, satisfactory data are difficult to obtain. Some scientists whose
observations are worthy of note state that the legs of this curious creature
secrete a poison, and that their trail over human flesh is marked by a sort of
rash, sometimes followed by fever. As showing that this is not an invariable
phenomenon, I may set the circumstantial account given me by Captain Robert
Kemp Wright, who, at his place at Pitch Lake, Trinidad, saw a good-sized
centipede crawl across the forehead of his sleeping son. Not daring to make a
move, as the centipede is supposed to strike very swiftly, Captain Wright was
compelled to stand still while it slowly made its way to the pillow and thence
to the floor, where it was killed. The boy, who had neither waked nor moved,
showed absolutely no trace of the reptile’s course.
The only direct
evidence which has come to me regarding the bite of the hundred-legged crawler
was from an English naturalist whom I met in Venezuela. He was bitten on the
ankle by a centipede nearly a foot long. So severe was the laceration that his
sock was clotted with blood before he could get it off. The two punctures were
marked. Almost immediately the ankle began to swell. The pain he describes as
being equal to a bad toothache. It kept him awake all that night. He had some
fever, which, however, he attributes rather to the loss of sleep than to any
specific action of the poison, as there were no other general symptoms. In the
morning the pain had abated a good deal, and he believes that he could have
gone about his pursuits had he been able to get his sock and shoe on. He noted
some discoloration about the wound. Late in the afternoon he was hobbling
about. A week in a carpet slipper was the extent of disability which he
suffered. On these evidences it would seem just, for the present, to set down
the scorpion and the centipede as painful, rather than dangerous, assailants.
Diseased imagination
could invent no creature more horrific of appearance than the tarantula. Its
bristling and hostile aspect, the swift ferocity of its rush, its great size,
and its enthusiastic preference for combat as against flight, are sufficient to
account for the fear and respect in which it is generally held. But, though
several species of the huge spider are native to the United States, and others
frequently drop out of banana bunches from South or Central America, to the
discomfiture of the unsuspecting grocer, no authentic instance of death from
tarantula poison in this country is obtainable. St. Louis papers please copy,
particularly that one which, several years ago, announced in appropriately
black headlines: IN TWO WEEKS Three Men Have Died From Bites of Tarantulas,
proceeding to explain that the victims were banana handlers in the wholesale
fruit district. No names were supplied--a common phenomenon in this class of
obituary notice. Search in the coroner’s records failed to bring to light any
case of the sort, and an exhaustive inquiry in the fruit district was equally
unproductive. The report was a pure fake.
Apparently of the same
nature is the "news story" of a Californian who, presumably mistaking
a tarantula for a fragrant floweret, was bitten on the nose and "died in
great agony." That, of course, is the proper way to die under such
circumstances. They all do it--in print.
Now let us see about
the "agony." Herbert H. Smith, the naturalist and collector, saw a
man bitten on the bare foot by a tarantula (Mygale) so hard as to draw blood.
There was very little swelling, and the man paid no heed to the occurrence, but
went on with his work.
I have talked with a
Southern Pacific Railroad fireman who was jabbed on the wrist by a large
tarantula. Some years before, he had been stung on the cheek by a
"bald" hornet. He wasn’t inclined to make any choice between the two
except that the tarantula (not the wound) "looked a d---- sight more
scary." He didn’t let the bite interfere with his job, even for the day.
On the other hand, Dr.
Murray-Aaron records serious symptoms following two bites upon the hand by a
large female trapdoor tarantula; pain comparable to that of the worst earache,
involuntary twitching of arms, legs, lips, and tongue, great swelling and
discoloration of the hand and forearm, and considerable suffering for four
days, with occasionally recurrent pains for a month. This, however, was in
Haiti. And even there, he believes, death never follows tarantula bite unless
the subject is in a depleted state of resistance from blood-disease or other
cause.
Under the heading
"Fatal Spider Bite" there is a considerable and interesting newspaper
bibliography. The details do not analyze well. Often the name of the supposed
victim doesn’t appear; and where names and specifications are given, the
evidence is hardly sufficient, as a rule, to convict the insect of any crime
more serious than mayhem. For example, a young woman in Brooklyn awoke one
morning to find a swollen spot on her body. On the bed was (according to
allegation) a spider. Some ten days later she died. For a long period she had
been in ill health. Yet the death was credited to the spider, though specific
symptoms of venomous poisoning were lacking.
The instance of a young
woman in an Eastern state is significant. Thrusting her foot into an old
slipper, she felt a sharp jab upon the point of her index digit. Upon hasty
removal of the footgear, she saw, or supposed she saw, a large and ferocious
spider dart forth. This, to her mind, was evidence both conclusive and damning.
Seizing upon the carving knife, she promptly cut off her perfectly good toe,
bound up the wound, and sent for the doctor, thereby blossoming out in next day’s
print as a "Heroine who had Saved her own life by her Marvelous Presence
of Mind." The thoughtful will wonder, however, whether the lady wouldn’t
have got at the real root of the matter by cutting off her head instead of her
toe.
Imagination and terror
undoubtedly account for certain general symptoms in this class of injury.
Colonel Nicholas Pike, a competent observer, records a case of a man slapping
his hand down upon a window sill and feeling a lively stab in the palm. At the
same moment a small spider ran across the back of his fingers and was captured.
There was a distinct puncture in the hand. Here, then, was a definite case,
where the wound and the insect were both in evidence. But examination of the
arachnid’s fangs satisfied Colonel Pike that they were far too small and weak
to penetrate the tough skin where the wound was. Meantime the victim exhibited
the classic symptoms of venomous poisoning: numbness, nausea, chills, and
threatened collapse. A physician, being summoned, examined both the victim and
the accused, and took Colonel Pike’s view that the spider was innocent. The man
was wrathful, with the indignation of terror. He said he guessed he knew
whether he was bitten or not, and that the physician’s business was to eschew
idle speculations and go ahead and save his life if it wasn’t already too late.
Thereupon the doctor opened up the wound and extracted a section of a fine
needle. The other half was found sticking in the window sill where a careless
seamstress had fixed it. The spider had been a fortuitous arrival. The man made
one of the quickest recoveries recorded.
Strangely enough, the
one really dangerous spider on the American continent is small, obscure, and
practically unknown to popular or journalistic hysteria. Latrodectus mactans is
its scientific name. It is about the size of a large pea, black with a red spot
on the back--a useful danger signal--and spins a small web in outhouses or
around wood-piles. So far as is known, its poison is the most virulent and
powerful, drop for drop, secreted by any living creature. Cobra virus, in the
minute quantity which the Latrodectus’s glands contain, would probably have no
appreciable effect upon man; whereas the tiny spider’s venom, in the volume
injected by the cobra’s stroke, would slay a herd of elephants. Were this
little-known crawler as large as the common black hunting spider of our gardens
and lawns, its bite would be almost invariably fatal. Happily, the
"red-spot’s" fangs, being small and weak, can with difficulty
penetrate the skin, and are able to inject venom in dangerous quantity only
when the bite is inflicted upon some tender-skinned portion of the body.
Nevertheless, fatalities consequent upon the bite of this insect are
sufficiently well attested to take rank as established scientific facts.
One of the most
detailed comes from an intelligent farmer of Greensboro, North Carolina. A
workman in his employ, while hauling wood, brushed at something crawling upon
his neck and felt a sharp, stinging sensation. He found a small, black spider
with a red spot. This was at 8.30 A.M. Presently, ten small white pimples
appeared about the bitten spot, though no puncture was visible and there was no
swelling. The pain soon passed, but returned in three hours and became general,
finally settling in the abdomen and producing violent cramps. At one o’clock
the man had a spasmodic attack. Two hours later he had so far recovered as to
be able to go back to work, for an hour. Then the spasms took him again; he
sank into coma, and died between ten and eleven o’clock that evening, about
fourteen hours after the bite. At no time were there local symptoms or
swelling, other than the slight eruption, but the neck, left arm, and breast
are reported as having assumed a stonelike hardness.
The same farmer had
seen, three years previous, a negro who had been bitten upon the ankle by a
"red-spot" and who suffered from diminishingly severe spasmodic
attacks for three weeks. The white pimples appeared in this case also. The
negro recovered, but the eruption reappeared for years thereafter whenever he
was overheated.
Recoveries from Latrodectus
bite are much more common, in the records, than deaths. Dr. Corson, of
Savannah, Georgia, reports six cases, characterized by agonizing pains,
spasmodic contractions like those of tetanus, and grave general symptoms. All
recovered. From Anaheim, California, a fatal case is reported by Dr. Bickford,
death occurring twenty hours after the bite. William A. Ball, of San
Bernardino, California, gives a vivid account of his sensations after being
bitten on the groin by a red-spotted spider, the data being attested by his
physician. Shortly after being bitten, he began to suffer great agony, with
convulsive contractions of the muscles.
"The pains in my
hip-joints, chest, and thighs grew rapidly more violent, until it seemed that
the bones in these parts of my body were being crushed to fragments." He
was seriously ill for ten days.
It may be that only
under certain uncomprehended conditions is the venom of the Latrodectus
effective. Inoculation of guinea pigs with the poison has been without any
resultant symptoms. Scientific experimenters have suffered themselves to be
bitten and have experienced no ill effects. The foreign cousins of the American
species, however, have as evil a repute as the "mactans." The
"katipo," found in sedges on the beach of New Zealand, is dreaded by
the Maoris, who traditionally refuse to sleep nearer than half a stone’s throw
from the water, that being the extent of range of the spider. The Latrodecti of
Corsica, Algeria, and France are infamous in the lore of the country folk,
which fact must be regarded as strongly evidential, when their insignificant
appearance is taken into account.
Only in America is
there no popular fear of this really formidable little creature. Yet it is
found in almost every part of the United States, though by no means one of the
commoner spiders. In the past five years I have seen two specimens at my
country place in central New York, and have heard of a dozen others. If people
understood generally that this rather ornamental insect is both more perilous
to life and health, and rather more prone to attack human beings, than the
superstitiously dreaded "deadly" copperhead, there would probably be
a heavy mortality in the Latrodectus family at the hands of energetic house-cleaners.
Years ago the United
States Bureau of Entomology received from an exasperated clergyman in Georgia a
dead insect, enclosed in this note:
"Prof. Riley: What
is this devil? He sailed down on my hedge. I took hold of his lone front leg,
and as quick as lightning he speared me under my thumb nail and I dropped him.
My thumb and whole arm are still paining me . . . "
The miscreant was a
fine specimen of Reduvius personatus, the cone-nosed blood-sucker, soon thereafter
to achieve heights of newspaper notoriety together with its cousin,
Melanolestes picipes, as the "kissing-bug." How many persons died (in
type) from kissing-bug bites in the year of enlightened civilization, 1899,
will never be known. But from far and near, from California and Connecticut and
the Carolinas, from Minnesota and Maryland and Maine, came startling reports of
this hitherto unfamed creature’s depredations upon the human countenance.
Thereby the spider family was relieved of much unmerited odium, for it is more
than suspected by entomologists that a large proportion of so-called spider
bites are really the work of the more vicious but less formidable-appearing
kissing-bug, as is often evidenced by the nature of the puncture.
The kissing-bug is
about half an inch in length, flat-backed, shaped in geometrically regular
angles, and armed with a large, hard beak. It is this beak which does the
damage, for the kissing-bug is a fighter and will risk a prod at anything that
gives it cause of offense. Testimony is not lacking that it sometimes punctures
the human epidermis with a view to obtaining blood at first hand instead of
from its natural prey.
But the curious feature
of the kissing-bug’s bite is its after effect. Neither the southern Reduvius nor
the northern Melanolestes possesses any venom apparatus. Now, an insect without
fangs (or sting), duct, and poison gland, can no more envenom the object of its
attack than a fish can kick a man to death. Yet we find such authorities as Dr.
L. O. Howard, the United States Entomologist, Professor Le Conte, Mr. Charles
Drury, of Cincinnati, and others, including a mass of medical witnesses,
declaring from first-hand observation that the kissing-bug bite causes much
swelling and severe pain. Le Conte, indeed, compares the effect to snake bite,
and states that people are seriously affected for a week. A case is recorded
from Holland, South Carolina, where there were vomiting and marked weakness.
Mr. Schwartz, an expert of the Bureau of Entomology at Washington, was bitten
twice upon the hand and testifies to the painful effects. In 1899, when the
species was very common in Washington, the Emergency Hospital had a long list
of patients who appeared on the records under the heading, "Insect
Bite."
Thus was started the
general "scare," a reporter with a keen nose for news having made a
legitimate "sensation" from the repeated entries on the hospital
roster. From Washington it spread over the country, and became the topic of the
day, until any insect bite or sting--mosquito, hornet, bedbug, or whatnot--was
magnified by the hysteria of the patient and the credulousness of the public
into a "dangerous" instance of kissing-bug poisoning. Reports of
fatal cases, however, invariably proved to be canards.
For explanation of the
marked local symptoms resultant upon attack by the insect, science has been
hard put to it. The general symptoms, observed in a few cases, where violent,
may probably be ascribed to shock and nervousness. But the marked swelling and
pain cannot be thus dismissed. Medical men believe that the insect, in its
various prowlings for food, thrusts its exploring beak into decaying animal and
vegetable matter and thus, in a sense, so poisons it that when it comes into
contact with human blood, a rapid local infection is set up--not through any
specific poison, as in spider bite or bee sting, but by the agency of the
putrefactive germs collected on the weapon.
Not the least
interesting phase of the kissing-bug scare is the rapidity and completeness of
its decadence. It is but ten years ago that the newspapers rang with it; that
victims of the bite, in every city, were fleeing, white-faced and racked with
forebodings, to doctor or hospital. To-day, both the Melanolestes and the
"conenose" are abroad in the land. Doubtless, upon provocation, they
are "spearing" others as they speared the outraged clergyman. But
that’s all. The bepunctured ones do not seek the consolations of medical or
journalistic attention. They put a little wet mud or peroxide on the place and
let it go at that. Exit another bogy!
One venomous creature
there is in this country which may justly be termed a public peril, in the
widest sense. Proportionately to population, more victims fall to it yearly in
the United States than to the dreaded cobra in India. Some twelve thousand
Americans are killed every year by its bite. Three hundred thousand more are
made seriously ill from the after effects. Unfortunately, the virus works so
slowly that alarm is stilled. The victims do not sicken at once. The bite is
forgotten; but ten days or two weeks after, the subject falls into a fever. His
blood is poisoned within him. Eventually, in extreme cases, he becomes
delirious, succumbs to a stupor, and dies.
Yet, because there is
nothing horrific to the sensation-loving imagination in the malaria-bearing
mosquito, public inertia or ignorance tolerates it with a grin and permits it
to breed in city and country alike throughout the length and breadth of the
nation. Compared with it, as a real menace, all the combined brood of snakes,
scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and other pet bugaboos of our childish
romanticism are utterly negligible; are as figment to reality, as shadow to
substance. It is perhaps characteristic of our wryly humorous American
temperament that we should have invested the unimportant danger with all the
shuddering attributes of horror, and have made of the real peril a joke to be
perennially hailed with laughter in a thousand thoughtless prints.