Note 189 — IX. SERPENT-CHARMING.

Several of the Aristolochieæ—plants generally having a very bitter taste, and a strong, pungent, disagreeable smell—are valuable alexipharmics. There is a plant very common in Jamaica, where it is called snake-withe, trailing over the stone fences, which I suspect to be an Aristolochia, and perhaps A. trilobata; it is employed as a sudden and potent sudorific, and as an antidote to serpent-bites in other countries, for in Jamaica there is no venomous reptile. The A. anguicida of Carthagena is described by Jacquin as fatal to serpents. He says that the juice of the root chewed and introduced into the mouth of a serpent so stupefies it that it may be for a long time handled with impunity: if the reptile is compelled to swallow a few drops, it perishes in convulsions. The root is also reputed to be an antidote to serpent-bites. "It is not a little remarkable," observes Dr Lindley, "that the power of stupefying snakes, ascribed in Carthagena to Aristolochia anguicida, should be also attributed to A. pallida, longa, bœtica, sempervirens and rotunda; which are said to be the plants with which the Egyptian jugglers stupefy the snakes they play with."