snakebite

Some accidents continued.

Snake bite.

There is no limit to the superstitions current among us in regard to snakes.

From time immemorial, we have cultivated a terrible fear of the snake.

If the snake were a little creature, it would hardly be worshipped by us, but since it is a big creature and a strangely fascinating one, it has come to be deified and worshipped.

The Western scientists of today hold that the snake is merely a creature of instinct and it should be destroyed forthwith wherever found.

From the official statistics we gather that not less than twenty thousand persons die every year in India of snake bite alone.

The destruction of every venomous snake is rewarded by the State; but it is really a question if the country has benefited by it in any way.

I could feel everything.

And I was in agony, not from the snake bite, but because I'd been punching rocks all afternoon.

And I was in absolute pain.

But it was like the biggest relief of my entire life.

And he immediately prescribed me antidepressants because he thought maybe I'll get depressed.

And that, completely transformed my life.

Again, it was like the snake bite.

I felt adrenaline flooding my veins.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by M.K. Subhash Chandra www.subharsings.com A Guide to Health by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Translated by A. Rama Iyer Chapter 12 Some Accidents Continued Snake Bite there is no limit to the superstitions current among us in regard to snakes from time immemorial we have cultivated a terrible fear of the snake we even dread the very mention of its name the hindus worship the serpent and have set apart a day in the year naga panchami for that purpose they suppose that the earth is supported by the great serpent god vishnu is called sesha sai and he is supposed to sleep on the serpent god and god shiva is supposed to have a garland of serpents round his neck we say that such and such a thing cannot be described even by the thousand-tongued adi sesha implying our belief in the snake's knowledge and discretion the serpent karkotaka is said to have bitten king nala and deformed him so that he might not suffer any harm in the course of his wanderings such conceptions are also to be met with among the christian nations of the west in english a man is very often described to be as wise and cunning as a serpent and in the bible satan is said to have assumed the shape of a serpent in order to tempt The real reason for the popular dread of snakes is obvious.

If the snake's poison should spread over the whole body, death must necessarily ensue, and since the idea of death is so dreadful to us, we dread the very name of a snake.

Hence, our worship of the snake is clearly based on our fear.

If the snake were a little creature, it would hardly be worshipped by us, but since it is a big creature and a strangely fascinating one, it has come to be defeated and worshipped.

the western scientists of to-day hold that the snake is merely a creature of instinct and it should be destroyed forthwith wherever found from the official statistics we gather that not less than twenty thousand persons die every year in india of snake bite alone the destruction of every venomous snake is rewarded by the state but it is really a question if the country has benefited by it in any way we find from experience that a snake never bites wantonly but only as a retaliatory measure when it is molested in any way does this not bespeak its discretion or at least its innocence the attempt to rid hindustan or any portion thereof of snakes is as ridiculous and futile as trying to wrestle with the air it may be possible to prevent snakes coming to a particular place by a systematic process of extermination but this can never be done on a large scale in a vast country like india it would be an altogether foolish enterprise to try to avoid snake bites by wholesale destruction of the snakes let us never forget that the serpents have been created by the same god who created us and all creatures god's ways are inscrutable but we may rest assured that he did not create animals like the lion and tiger the serpent and the scorpion in order to bring about the destruction of the human race if the serpents were to meet in council and conclude that man has been created by god for their destruction seeing that he generally destroys a snake wherever found should we approve of their conclusion surely not in the same way we are wrong in regarding the serpent as a natural enemy of man the great saint francis of assisi who used to roam about the forest was not hurt by the serpents or the wild beasts but they even lived on the terms of intimacy with him so too thousands of yogis and fakirs live in the forests of hindustan amidst lions and tigers and serpents but we never hear of their meeting death at the hands of these animals it might however be contended that they must certainly be meeting their death in the forests but that we do not hear of it as we live so far granted but we cannot deny that the number of yogis that live in the forests is nothing in comparison with that of the serpents and wild beasts so that if these animals were really the natural enemies of man the whole race of yogis and other dwellers in the forests should be become very rapidly extinct especially since they have no weapons with which to defend themselves against their attacks but they have by no means become extinct and we may conclude therefore that they have been allowed to live unmolested in the forests by the serpents and wild beasts in fact i have implicit faith in the doctrine that so long as man is not inimical to the other creatures they will not be inimical to him love is the greatest of the attributes of man without it the worship of god would be an empty nothing it is in short the root of all religion whatsoever besides why should we not regard the cruelty of the serpents and the wild beasts as merely the product and reflection of a man's own nature are we any the less murderers than they are not our tongues as venomous as a serpent's fangs do we not prey upon our innocent brethren much in the same way as lions and leopards all scriptures proclaim that when man becomes absolutely harmless all the other animals will begin to live on terms of intimacy with him when foods and conflicts as fierce as that between the lion and the lamb are going on within our own breasts is it any wonder that such things should go on in the external world for we are but the reflection of the world around us all the features of the external world are found reflected in the inner world of our mind when we change our nature the world around should also inevitably change do we not find that the world assumes a totally different aspect to those individual men and women who change their own nature by strenuous self-discipline this is the great mystery of god's creation as well as the great secret of true happiness Our happiness or otherwise rests entirely upon what we are.

We have no need to depend on other people at all in this matter.

our excuse for writing at such length on snake-bite is this rather than merely prescribe cure for snake-bite we thought it as well to go a little more deeply into the matter and point out the best way of getting rid of our foolish fears if even a single reader were to adopt in practice the principles we have been discussing we shall consider our effort amply rewarded moreover our object in writing these pages is not merely to give the generally accepted hygienic principles but to go to the root of the matter and deal with the most fundamental principles of health modern investigations have also shown that the man who is perfectly healthy whose blood has not been tainted by excess of heat and whose food is wholesome and sattvic is not immediately affected by the poison of the snake but that on the other hand its effect is instantaneous as well as fatal on the man whose blood has been tainted by drink or unwholesome food one doctor goes so far to say that the blood of the man who eschews salt and the like and lives exclusively on a fruit diet remains so pure that no kind of poison can have any effect on him i have not had enough experience myself to say how far this is true the man whose diet has been free from salt and the like for only one or two years cannot be said to have attained this stage of perfect immunity for the blood which has been tainted and poisoned by bad practices continued for years cannot be brought back to its normal state of purity in the short period of a year or two it has further been scientifically demonstrated that a man under the influence of fear or anger is much more and much sooner affected by the poison than when in the normal condition everybody knows how fear and anger make the pulse and the heart beat faster than the normal rate and the quicker the flow of blood in the veins the greater the heat generated But the heat generated by evil passions is not healthy, but extremely harmful.

Somebody ought to kill a reptile a bit in my home.

Doc, just a minute ago you started to say something about Snakebite not killing.

But how about them two marks on his thumb? Them snakes gashes like some I've seen.

No, that don't explain how it...

A Denton County man who works with rescue animals and dresses up as Spider-Man to cheer up kids finds himself in need of support.

Jeremy's son says he nearly died after a venomous snake bite.

Fox 4's Alex Boye talked to him about that close call.

And our viewers

And you're like, you don't get shot to death in the meantime.

This has been the summer of snake bites.

Yeah, it has.

Every couple of days, someone's almost dying with a snake.

Howdy Do is in there.

One

doctor just moments ago told me that he has treated six this year snake bites, venomous snakes.

His case especially bad, possibly requiring skin grafts tomorrow.

There's so many good camp stories.

Uh, at momentum, I told the snake bite story that that's a good one.

Um, So there's a couple here.

That first troop I joined, the Scoutmaster, he tried his best, but he was not the greatest leader, unfortunately.

She's like, we're going to make this happen.

We're going to get You only have to get 21, by the way.

So, yeah, but like the snake bite story is one of my favorite ones.

My first day as a camper at Boy Scout camp.

How much good it did I cannot tell, but after a few days the swelling went down.

He was kept on as much milk diet as possible, and besides that, got a goodly share of all the cures for snake bites that the neighbors would mention.

The chief remedy of this kind was a plant of the wild lettuce family, which grew in the woods.

It was there called lion's heart, as it had a heart-shaped leaf.

Not Roa- don't ask for Roadkill.

Or maybe it could be like Snakebite, you have half and half.

[laughs]

[laughs]