Man Bitten by Venomous Snakes — He’s Dead

Here’s a story in the The Washington Post about Bill Haast, a famed herpetologist who ran the Miami Serpentarium. Over his lifetime he had been bitten around 172 times by venomous snakes, including cobras, vipers, and a blue krait. He died a week ago . . . of old age: 100 years old.

Obviously, he survived all of the snake bites. Way back in 1948 he started injecting diluted amounts of snake venom into himself, and slowly increased the amount over time. His body built up immunity to the venom, creating the antibodies necessary to combat the effects of being bitten.

The reason he got bitten was that he was one of the first snake “milkers”. You’ve seen it on TV: they grab a snake and have it bite the rubber membrane over a collection cup. But when you do it as much as he did, and for as long, well, mistakes happen. He was also missing the tips of a couple of fingers from snake bites. This story in the New York Times says

An eastern diamondback rattlesnake left one hand looking like a claw. A Malayan pit viper mangled an index finger. A cottonmouth bit a finger, which instantly turned black, prompting his wife to snip off the fingertip with garden clippers.

So it wasn’t all fun and games, and the protection provided by the venom injections obviously wasn’t perfect.

Both stories are worth reading.

One thing I think Bill Haast has taught us is how the immune system really does provide protection. These days the Hygiene Hypothesissuggests that the lack of stimulation of our immune systems from an overly clean world may explain the increase in allergies, and may be related to some autoimmune diseases. Along those lines, there is anecdotal evidence of folks deliberately acquiring a hookworm infestation in order to try to combat severe allergies. You can read one such story here. The idea is that we evolved with constant to exposure to things like hookworm, and without that exposure our immune systems go into overdrive and make us over-sensitive to everyday items, hence the allergies.

We also evolved going barefoot and getting constant exposure to all sorts of soil bacteria. Barefooters are constantly admonished that “you might get an infection.” Well, anything’s possible, but the various little dings that occasionally occur are more like Bill Haast’s venom inoculations. They stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies, and they can keep the immune system from going into overdrive when it doesn’t need to.

I strongly suspect that barefooters, having built up the immunity to a host of everyday bacteria that the shod have not be exposed to, or been exposed to only rarely, are less likely to get a serious infection when more serious injuries (either barefoot or shod) occur.