The Subtle Beast Snakes, From Myth to Medicine 1st Edition
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Science Spectra Book Series
Series Editor: Vivian Moses, King’s College, University of London, UK
Volume 1
The Key to the Future
by John Cater
Volume 2
On Beyond Uranium
by Sigurd Hofmann
Volume 3
A Terrible Beauty is Born
by Brendan Curran
Volume 4
The Subtle Beast
by André Ménez
Volume 5
Weather Rage
by Ross Reynolds
The Subtle Beast
Snakes, from Myth
to Medicine
André Ménez
First published 2003 by Taylor & Francis
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Taylor & Francis Inc,
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Taylor & Francis is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2003 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in this
book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However, neither the
publisher nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for
any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drug administration,
any medical procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned within
this book, you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturer’s guidelines.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-42267-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-42442-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0–415–28497–X
ISBN 0–415–28498–8 (Print Edition)
Cover photograph supplied by kind permission of D. Heuclin.
Contents
Page
Preface vi
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1 Men and snakes: truths and fallacies 1
Chapter 2 Snakes and myths 9
Chapter 3 Snakes and early medicine 13
Chapter 4 The origin of snakes 19
Chapter 5 What are snakes? 29
Chapter 6 Classification of snakes 51
Chapter 7 Discovery of snake venoms 65
Chapter 8 Snake venom potency 73
Chapter 9 Clinical aspects of snake poisoning 77
Chapter 10 Non-toxic venom components 91
Chapter 11 What are snake toxins? 97
Chapter 12 Toxins in action 123
Chapter 13 Stopping the action of toxins 133
Chapter 14 From toxins to drugs 139
Appendix: a taste of protein chemistry 147
Bibliography 155
Index 159
Preface
This book introduces the reader to the complex and absorbing world of
snakes. Each of the fourteen chapters can be read independently, but the
reader will profit most by reading the book from cover to cover, since it
traces a fascinating journey from the macroscopic features of snakes to the
molecular description of their venom components. The first three chapters
describe how, through the ages, snakes have inspired fear or love, have been
cast as gods or devils, as living representations of good or evil, and even as
fantastic medicinal tools. The sway of such supernatural beliefs has progres-
sively eroded since the seventeenth century by a number of great scientists,
whose work is described in the eleven remaining chapters. The first three of
these look at the origin, features and classification of snakes, and then an
increasingly precise description of snake venoms and their components leads
to the final chapter, which explains how venoms are useful to us. On his or
her journey through the book, the reader will bear witness as the snake sheds
its mythical skin to emerge in the full splendour of its true self.
Acknowledgements
I wish to very warmly thank the following persons for their kind help, contri-
bution or patience: Michael J. Benton, René Cado, Antonio Camargo, Cécile,
Henriette Clévier, Christophe, Thierry Damerval, Jay Fox, André Galat,
Dominique Hauteville, Hal Heatwole, Daniel Heuclin, Peter Houghton, Ivan
Ineich, Florence Izabelle, Christian Jacq, Carlos Jared, Carlo Laj, Cynthia Lee,
Francine Lefèvre, Jürg Meier, Angelo Moreto, Frédéric Mûller, Stefan
Niewiaroswski, Danièle Patron, Jean-Claude Rage, Olivier Remondière,
Philippe Savarain, Denis Servent, Reto Stöcklin, André Syrota, Jacques
Thaler, Julian White, Wolfgang Wüster.
A special thank you to Jean-Philippe Chippaux, Max Goyffon, Manjunatha
Kini and Nicolas Vidal for their critical reading of the manuscript. Special
thanks also to Daniel Heuclin for his kind gift of so many photographs, and
to Renée Ménez for her constant help and support. Thanks are also due to
the authorities of the Commissariat à l’énergie Atomique for giving me per-
mission to write this book.
1
Men and snakes: truths and
fallacies
The good old times, when a well-rounded person might master all aspects of
science, seem, alas, to have gone. Science has become such a vast universe,
divided into so many apparently strictly separated areas, that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to find one topic of interest to everybody, especially if
the reader is not seeking a popularised approach.
Undoubtedly, zoology, the biological science of animals, is a privi-
leged domain because everyone has some idea of what it is about. An agree-
able discipline, it is usually welcomed by school children, so the basic
elements of zoology are absorbed early in life. Moreover, we are surrounded
by all sorts of animals, from pets to pests, offering us an immediate opportun-
ity to appreciate and understand animal behaviour. Television, too, is a
major source of information with many, often award-winning and popular,
natural history documentaries.
Among the different creatures that populate the world around us,
snakes occupy a special place; hardly anyone is indifferent to them. They are
often beloved, sometimes excessively, or just hated. Most people are strik-
ingly well informed about them; just ask anyone to describe a snake. Back
will come the answer that snakes are long animals with no legs, able to crawl
on the ground, swim in rivers (people are often unaware of true sea snakes)
and climb trees. Most people know that snakes can be poisonous, although
this is sometimes a source of confusion as many snakes are rightly recognised
as not venomous. It is also common knowledge that snakes periodically shed
their skin, from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail.
Perhaps even more surprisingly, the specialised names of some snakes
are widely familiar. For instance, the one commonly called a ‘viper’ in
Europe is a ‘rattlesnake’ in the United States. ‘Cobras’ and ‘Najas’ (Figure 1.1)
mean types of snakes to most people, although they may not remember
exactly what they look like. ‘Pythons’ and ‘boas’ are understood not to be
venomous but are famous for their ability to coil around their prey, killing it
by suffocation or heart failure. People know they are large, although their
actual size is often exaggerated. Contrary to common belief, the anaconda is
Figure 1.1 A snake charmer in India (D. Heuclin).
Men and snakes 3
not the largest snake, a title that belongs to the Indian python (Python
molurus) which can grow to more than 10 m in length.
As we delve deeper, we are frequently confronted by another world,
one of fantasies which are endlessly passed on and which often originate
from ancient beliefs, legends, myths and even religions. It is fascinating to try
to get to grips with what lies behind these misconceptions. Just think of a few
common questions, often part of strongly held but misguided beliefs.
Snakes and worms
Are snakes related to worms? Definitely not. Probably because they look
similar, and also because they slither, children sometimes confuse the two
groups of animals. Interestingly, some historians of the last two centuries are
convinced that the same confusion appeared in Bible stories. This is the case
for the ‘fiery serpents’ which killed Hebrews crossing regions around the Red
Sea on their long journey towards the Promised Land. Travelling along the
valley of Arava, between Aqaba and the Dead Sea, on the rocky sea of Suph
they met the fiery serpents sent by Yahweh to punish them for complaining
of their misfortunes: ‘And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and
they bit the people; and much people of Israel died’ (Numbers 21:6).
Some historians interpret this story as a manifestation of dracunculosis,
a disease caused by worms, not snakes. Freshwater lakes and marshes of
certain tropical areas, especially in Africa and the Middle East, are known to
be infested by filaria, a small endemic roundworm called Dracunculus medi-
nensis. Their larvae are carried by a tiny sort of fresh-water shrimp, no more
than a millimetre long, which infects people who drink contaminated water.
It takes about a year of incubation for the worm larva to develop to the adult
state. Usually only the disease-causing females can be detected. They are
thin animals, 35 cm to 100 cm long (yes, up to a metre!), which migrate
towards the outer tissues of the body, punching holes through the skin to
release their larvae. Unfortunately, dracunculosis is still present in subtropi-
cal areas stretching from the west coast of Africa all the way to India. In
1758, Carolus Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist and physician, gave a
scientific description of the adult worm, and in 1871 Aleksej Pavlovich Fed-
schenko, a Russian zoologist, described its lifecycle.
If we interpret the biblical story of fiery serpents as a manifestation of
dracunculosis, we have to assume that the chroniclers of the times confused
snakes and worms. But is that really likely? The famous Egyptian medical
papyrus discovered around 1870 by Georg Moritz Ebers, a German Egyptolo-
gist and novelist, described the disease as early as the fifteenth century BC,
reporting that, when a human limb displays a sort of ulceration containing a
larva (not yet identified as a worm), the skin should be pierced and the larvae
4 Men and snakes
removed gently with pincers. The long and thin whitish matter extracted
looked like mouse brain! Plutarch, the famous Greek biographer, quoting
Agatharcides, reported that those who travelled around the Red Sea suffered
from a strange disease, with small snakes that came out of their bodies and
ate their legs and arms. When touched, those snakes burrowed back into the
sufferer’s body and hid in their muscles, causing terrible pain. Clearly, a
mystery has long surrounded the nature of the ‘creature’ that was responsible
for dracunculosis. It was sometimes called the dragonneau, the Pharaoh
worm, the filaire of médine or the Guinea worm. An interesting debate con-
tinues on whether or not snakes and worms were indeed confused in the
past, particularly in the Bible. We shall most probably never know the
answer.
Today there is no reason for confusion: snakes are not worms. They
have a spinal column, or backbone, and so belong to the category of animals
called ‘vertebrates’, a group including fish, amphibians (like frogs, toads and
newts), reptiles, birds and mammals. We humans belong to the same broad
group as snakes. By contrast, worms are invertebrates without any backbone.
Popular beliefs – most of them wrong
Are snakes really slimy? Quite commonly, even non-poisonous snakes
repel people because they are considered to be slimy or ‘gluey’. This is just
not true. Reptiles are among the cleanest of animals and it is quite rare to
find a ‘dirty’ snake. Why, then, are they thought to be slimy? Perhaps
because of the smooth scales which cover their bodies, giving them a shiny
appearance and allowing one to slip readily between your fingers if you try
to pick it up.
Is a snake capable of hypnotising? Everyone has seen pictures of
cobras watching small birds which seem totally paralysed. And we all
remember the Walt Disney movie The Jungle Book, based on the famous col-
lection of stories by Rudyard Kipling, which showed Kaa, a huge snake that
subjugates Mowgli. However, this fascinating attitude of snakes should not
be misinterpreted. Just look at a snake watching its prey. The snake is virtu-
ally expressionless – just a steady gaze suggesting profound concentration.
Look closer and you will see that snakes have no eyelids and that the move-
ments of their eyeballs are limited. Moreover, their pupils are large and dark,
further adding to the impression of a fixed gaze. Snakes may seem to hypno-
tise their prey but it is most unlikely that they really do so.
Do snakes love music? Watch a snake charmer playing the flute: the
slow movement of the snake, apparently following the musical beat, cer-
tainly makes it look as though the animal (usually a cobra chosen for its
impressive posture) is an interested listener. But it probably cannot be true
Men and snakes 5
because snakes would find it difficult to hear music. While not deaf, their
auditory apparatus, and therefore their hearing ability, is limited. Instead,
they sense vibrations which reach them through the ground on which they
lie and then they rise up, apparently having been woken by the music. Why
then do they follow the beat? The snakes are simply trained to follow the
movement of the flute in a defensive posture; if the flute was motionless, the
cobra would sink back into the basket.
Do snakes really love milk? This belief was, and might well still be,
strongly anchored in the minds of many pastoral societies in some countries
in Europe and elsewhere. People thought that snakes could suck milk directly
from cows, sheep and even from women sleeping near their babies. It was
claimed that snakes are so attracted by milk that they approach babies in
their cots and take it directly from the infants’ mouths! Not unexpectedly, in
times gone by, all sorts of defences were recommended to prevent snakes
from approaching a house, a woman or a baby. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, it was thought that the best thing was to carry garlic,
which, as some people believe, effectively repels demons. Alternatively,
people were advised to carry the heart of a vulture, or wrap themselves in the
leaves of an ash tree. Neither the milk-loving behaviour of snakes nor these
repellent remedies have been confirmed by zoologists and you won’t find
any mention of them in textbooks!
Are ‘minute snakes’, as they are called in French literature, at all dan-
gerous? Again the answer has to be ‘no’. In fact, they got their name from the
Latin minutus (small) because they are tiny, not because they could kill a
man in a minute. These tiny reptiles, perhaps no more than 15 cm long, are
totally harmless to humans (Figure 1.2). They use their heads to dig into the
soil and some of them seem to be blind, hence they are called ‘blind-snakes’.
Blind snakes are harmless but, as we shall see later, there are many other
snakes, powerful and dangerous, which can indeed kill a healthy man rather
rapidly.
Are snakes’ tongues poisonous? This is also a common but once more
unfounded belief. Snakes’ tongues are forked (Figure 1.3). They are pushed
out through a groove in the front of their mouths, then flicker and briefly
touch objects in their immediate vicinity, from which they collect chemicals
enabling them to identify the surface they have just licked. The chemical
molecules collected by the tongue, as well as those in the air, are carried to a
specific organ in the nasal cavity which examines them and reports to the
snake’s brain. Tasting is a highly developed function in snakes which allows
them to find out whether it is food or something less desirable that has just
been tasted. The poison produced by venomous snakes has nothing to
do with the tongue; it is injected by long, pointed teeth (fangs), linked to
Figure 1.2 Snake or worm? Just a blindsnake: Typhlops vermicularis from Turkey (D.
Heuclin).
Figure 1.3 The tongue of an American crotal, Crotalus viridis (D. Heuclin).
Men and snakes 7
specialised venom-producing glands usually located in the upper jaw behind
the eye.
In some countries, including South Africa, there is a common belief
that all snakes spit their venom. But once again this is another fallacy. Only a
few snakes, such as the African cobra (Naja nigricollis) and the ringhals
(Hemachatus haemachatus), spit. They eject a swift thin stream of venom
more by squirting than spitting.
Why, at the very end of the twentieth century, are our minds still full of
so many erroneous impressions? One possible explanation, but certainly not
the only one, is the supernatural roles that snakes have played in human
history, and particularly in mythology. Many ancient, fabulous and sacred
tales, usually derived from remote religious beliefs, tell us how extraordinary
deeds were accomplished by supernatural creatures which were often ser-
pents. Passed down through the millennia from generation to generation,
some stories came to us in a confused mixture of truth and legend.
That snakes played fabulous roles in mythology is not surprising. These
creatures do such strange things: they move around relatively quickly
without legs, manoeuvre well in trees and in water, swallow their prey
whole, regularly renew their skin and sometimes inject a highly dangerous
poison when they bite. Snakes certainly appear to be so very different, both
from other animals and from ourselves, that it is easy to see why, until the
relatively recent advent of rigorous scientific investigation, these reptiles
were regarded almost as supernatural creatures.
