Some of them
are good-tempered, and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed.
Others are excessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even
attack of their own accord when entirely unprovoked and unthreatened.
On reaching Sao Paulo on our southward journey from Rio to Montevideo,
we drove out to the "Instituto Serumtherapico," designed for the study
of the effects of the venom of poisonous Brazilian snakes. Its
director is Doctor Vital Brazil, who has performed a most
extraordinary work and whose experiments and investigations are not
only of the utmost value to Brazil but will ultimately be recognized
as of the utmost value for humanity at large. I know of no institution
of similar kind anywhere. It has a fine modern building, with all the
best appliances, in which experiments are carried on with all kinds of
serpents, living and dead, with the object of discovering all the
properties of their several kinds of venom, and of developing various
anti-venom serums which nullify the effects of the different venoms.
Every effort is made to teach the people at large by practical
demonstration in the open field the lessons thus learned in the
laboratory. One notable result has been the diminution in the
mortality from snake-bites in the province of Sao Paulo.
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