Varieties of snakes

Experts in matters concerning snakes and their natural properties divide them into three types. In snakes of one species, the venom is very strong, and they do not delay the moment of a bite for more than three hours. There is no treatment for stinging by them - and such snakes are deaf and rattlesnake snakes - and nothing helps here except immediate cutting off the organ and far-reaching and penetrating cauterization with fire, which burns the poison and narrows the passages. When treating this, vomiting is sometimes useful after the stomach is full of salted fish, and then other methods are used. If the snake’s venom is a little weaker, then tight tugging and then other general means of treatment are enough.

Then there is a weak type of snake - they rarely kill, and an average type - they kill no later than three or seven days. They say that as for the land dragon and large-bodied snakes like it, its bite is treated only because it is an ulcer, and not because it is any significant poison.

They say the first category of snakes includes several genera. Such, for example, is the snake called the queen, in Greek basilicus - she kills with her gaze and the sound of her voice. Or, for example, a snake called a swallow, its color is similar to the color of a swallow, and its length is about an elbow, and it kills in less than two hours. Or, for example, a snake, called dry uskulus because of the great dryness of its skin, its length is from three to five cubits, its color is ashen or yellowish, its eyes glow strongly, and it kills in an interval of two to three hours.

The spitting snake also belongs to them. She can spew and throw out saliva, clenching her teeth, and kills anyone whom her saliva or the smell of her saliva reaches, it is up to two cubits long, its color is ashy, yellowish, and it kills the stung one before it hurts him.

Snakes of this category are mentioned in books not because there is great hope of curing the bitten, but only so that they are known about them and know that no treatment will help from them, except for what is said there, maybe sometimes there will be benefit from what we say.

There are other types of deaf, killing snakes that abound within Egypt; some of them sometimes have horns and have a variety of colors: white, red, red, honey, ashy. Sometimes they look like vipers, and sometimes they have teeth like hooks. Dragons that kill instantly belong to the same category.

The second category is vipers and similar snakes. They are also diverse; they include real vipers, oak vipers, thirst vipers, and others, which we will discuss below.

In snakes, another difference is sometimes observed - not in appearance, but between those that are found among individuals of the same species. If they differ in sex, male or female, then the males have fewer teeth, but they are more poisonous and sharper, although they say that the females are more harmful due to the abundance of their teeth. They also differ in age - a young snake is more malignant than an old one - and also in body size - large snakes are worse than small ones with a short body, if they belong to the same species - or in the terrain of the snakes, huddling in waterless places and in the mountains, worse than those that live on the coasts and in areas where there is a lot of water. The difference is also determined by the fullness or emptiness of the body; hungry snakes are worse and more poisonous.

As for the difference due to emotional experiences, angry and angry snakes have worse venom,   and according to the time of year, their venom is worst in the summer. They say that thick, long snakes of the same breed are worse than thin ones.

Some people believe that the venom of snakes and vipers is cold, but they are wrong. The cold that the stung person feels comes from the dying of the innate heat as a result of the opposition to the poison; it is the innate heat that warms the body, spreading in it and blazing, and when there is no innate heat and the heart burns with true fire, the limbs do not necessarily have to heat up. According to some, rattlesnake venom is especially cold, as if it binds and thickens the blood in the heart and therefore causes severe numbness. But this is not the case, and the numbness comes from the poison dispelling the innate heat and killing it. If someone refers to the fact that animals with a cold nature are, as it were, dead in winter, and an animal with a hot nature increases heat and ardor in winter, then whoever says this, his argument is not solid, and such a statement is not correct in relation to small animals. insects, and in relation to animals with large bodies. Proof of the depravity of these words is the fact that the wasp’s nature is very hot, and the wasp dies in winter and does not move. It is not far from the truth that the snake, with its hot nature, does not move in winter due to the confrontation of the natural nature of winter and other phenomena that arise in it.