Tiger Snake

The greater number of fatal cases of snake-bites to men and dogs near Melbourne, and most of the experiments by Professor Halford and others to test the power of the poison, and the efficacy of the injection of ammonia into the blood, and other modes of treatment, refer to this species, which is by far the most abundant of all the dangerous snakes of the colony.

In Dr. Halford's experiments at the University of Melbourne, of 31 dogs bitten by active Tiger Snakes, 27 died and 4 recovered; the deaths occurring, on the average, in 2 hours 2 minutes.

Deputy-Inspector-General MacBeth, causing 29 dogs to be bitten by Cobras found they all died, on the average, in 2 hours 42 minutes, showing that, contrary to the expressed opinion of many Indian practitioners, the Australian Tiger Snake is more rapidly fatal than that of the Cobra.

Dr. McCrae, the Chief Medical Officer of Victoria, caused 14 dogs to be bitten by this species of snake, and none recovered. No remedies were used in any of these three sets of cases.

The number of deaths of human beings in the colony from snake-bite in a year is very small; but some of the cases given in the Australian Medical Journal for March 1875 are interesting from the bites being publicly given in Melbourne, and the precise times noted both of the bite and the death of the man.

One, a police magistrate bitten on the arm by a Tiger Snake, died in 24 hours; a man named Underwood, a well known vendor of a supposed antidote, was bitten in public by one of this species and was dead within an hour; another man named Cartwright, exhibiting some of these snakes, was bitten and also died within an hour.

Dr. Casey, of Brighton, reported a case in which a man died within a half hour of the bite; and a man named Griffiths, handling some of these snakes as an exhibition at the Port Phillip Club Hotel, was bitten by a Tiger Snake, and died in less than half an hour.

The symptoms seem to be much alike in all cases if snake-bite, viz.:-At first faintness and slight convulsions, then sickness of the stomach (probably a reflex action from the brain), with trembling and weakness in the limbs; the pupils of the eyes dilated, a tendency to sleep, and then total paralysis and coma immediately preceding death.

The young of the Tiger Snake are about thirty in number, like the adult in all respects, and brought forth in January.

The general food of the Tiger Snake is composed of frogs, lizards, and mice, &c.; On one occasion, however, I put a live mouse into a box in which I had a Tiger Snake, to feed it, and was astonished to find the next morning that the mouse had killed the snake by biting the back of its neck, and had eaten some of its flesh.

Keeping some of these snakes together in a box, I frequently noticed them bite each other vigorously when stirred up, without the poison-fangs producing any ill effect.

- Frederick McCoy