Some were purchased by individuals, and Jack pocketed his gains, observing, "A frog, or a mouse, occasionally, is enough for a snake's satisfaction." The Naturalist's Cabinet says, that "In presence of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while the philosophers were making elaborate dissertations on the danger of the poison of vipers, taken inwardly, a viper catcher, who happened to be present, requested that a quantity of it might be put into a vessel; and then, with the utmost confidence, and to the astonishment of the whole company, he drank it off.

Everyone expected the man instantly to drop down dead; but they soon perceived their mistake, and found that, taken inwardly, the poison was as harmless as water." William Oliver, a viper catcher at Bath, was the first who discovered that, by the application of olive oil, the bite of the viper is effectually cured.

On the first of June, 1735, he suffered himself to be bitten by an old black viper; and after enduring the agonizing symptoms of approaching death, by using olive oil he perfectly recovered.
Vipers' flesh was formerly esteemed for its medicinal virtues, and its salt was thought to exceed every other animal product in giving vigor to a languid constitution.
According to Cornelius Heinrich Agrippa (called Agrippa of Nettesheim), a German philosopher, and student of alchemy and magic, who was born in 1486, and died in 1535, "if you would handle adders and snakes without harm, wash your hands in the juice of radishes, and you may do so without harm." Even though it may seem a digression, I yield to the temptation to include here an extraordinary "snake story" taken from An Actor Abroad, which Edmund Leathes published in 1880: I will here relate the story of a sad death--I might feel inclined to call it suicide--which occurred in Melbourne shortly before my arrival in the colonies.

About a year previous to the time of which I am now writing, a gentleman of birth and education, a Cambridge B.A., a barrister by profession and a literary man by choice, with his wife and three children emigrated to Victoria.

He arrived in Melbourne with one hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket, and hope unlimited in his heart.
Poor man! He, like many another man, quickly discovered that muscles in Australia are more marketable than brains.