A renowned scientist, a deadly snakebite, and a diary that documented it (2025) | Hacker News Reader

A renowned scientist, a deadly snakebite, and a diary that documented it (2025)

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29 pointsareoform15 comments

When I was in Mexico, a guy told me he had been somewhere in the backcountry alone and got stung by a scorpion. He spent several days in his tent in agonizing pain not if he may die or not. Quite an experience.

There are a few species of colubrids that are venomous. What is surprising to most people is that the common garter snake is mildly venomous. The venom doesn't really affect humans like their more venomous cousins, but if their bites do manage to break the skin enough to mix in their saliva, it contains venom that has a mildly neurotoxic effect. This can cause swelling, bruising, and numbness in the affected area. Such a bite is often described as a "bee sting".

I'm not going to look it up (will leave it to discussion here to sort it out), but iirc the fangs of a garter snake are in the back of their mouth, so you'd have a finger fully bitten, or an otherwise "full" bite to likely be affected, no?

I wouldn't call their rear teeth "fangs". I don't think they are even grooved like rear fangs. In colubrids, the venom is in their saliva, so even if you are cut by one of the front teeth, that can be enough to get envenomated. How much of a dosage you get really comes down to how much the snake "chews" on your hand, which mixes in the saliva and thus the venom.

I remember watching a documentary in the late 1990s or early 2000s about a man getting bitten by a venomous snake at a research center.

IIRC, he was a herpetologist and after calling 911, he took a voice recorder with him so that he could record the symptoms of the bite until he was treated at the hospital. Unlike the OP subject, he survived.

911 didn't exist when he was bit. The chances of a hospital having an antivenom for an African snake would also be basically zero, and bites from the type of snake it was believed to be were not believed to be likely lethal at the time.

Was it this herpetologist? Sadly he did not recover. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Patterson_Schmidt

"Urination at 12:20 AM mostly blood, but small in amount. Mouth had bled steadily as shown by dried blood at both angles of mouth. "

But let's not go to the hospital where I can get any sort of treatment whatsoever. Mind you, this was before hospital prices would bankrupt you too.

Instead, I think this is the simple human mechanism to say I've made it through yesterday and I'll make it through today.

Certainly you might think that.

More probable is that a world leader in herpetology (study of reptiles and amphibians) was acutely aware of the state of antivenom production in 1957, spotty for common snakes and near non existent for rare and as yet unidentified African snakes.

Production is slow and low volume, shelf life is limited, the number of variations required for different snakes is large.

Of possible interest, to just scratch the surface:

* https://biomedicalsciences.unimelb.edu.au/departments/depart...

* https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-05-03/universal-ant...

It might counter your apparent notion that the man here could just pop into a hospital and be magically cured.

Seems it would at least be worth a try.

Something like this likely went through his head. The problem with exotic snakes is that if they are venomous, the likelihood of there being antivenom obtainable within the time that it could serve you any therapeutic use is pretty low. That's true even today. In his case, he was probably documenting symptoms to be thorough at first, and then when he suspected that he had been envenomated, he did the calculus and realized he was already dead.

Envenomation is not necessarily a death sentence. It comes down to immune system response and dosage.

That being said, even today, people foolish enough in the US to own black mambas or cobras are taking significant risks. If bitten and envenomated, they would likely die before antivenom can be air lifted from whatever rare reserves may exist to their location. If one is going to own such snakes, one should be willing to spend six figures on many doses of one's own antivenom, which is only good for 2-5 years and must be replenished, or, to live near a location where such antivenom is stockpiled and be ready to pay to buy replacement antivenom afterward. The assumption should always be that if one owns a venomous snake, it is a question of when, and not if, one will be bit.

I have had a few tame (non-venomous) reptiles over the years. Very gentle things, but sometimes, they bite. The reasons why are numerous: They get scared. They aren't feeling well. They are trying to communicate something. Regardless, they will bite. Getting bitten by a 7 foot male iguana with beefy jowls is not fun. Thankfully, he just nipped me. I still had to clean out the wound and butterfly it.

More probably is that he had a chance, even if small, but was killed by his own hubris. Being world leader in herpetology does not make one an expert doctor.

In 1957 it would make him better informed on the effect of snake venom than almost every single doctor within driving distance, and as such, at that point in time he would have had no knowledge on whether the bite was to prove fatal or merely extremely debilitating for 24to 48 hours. Further, people seem to assume he would be able to ring or drive to a hospital / doctor when it's probable he may have had no phone and lacked the strength to even walk to the nearest house.

I remember doing a not dissimilar experiment to see what all the surfers were complaining about regarding bluebottle jellyfish stings. I picked up a carcass and smeared it on my arm for a minute or so, then spent the rest of the afternoon observing the results. After the expected burning sensation (I have been burnt a number of times) died down I then received an ache in my armpit which I put down to my lymph nodes working overtime, after which I had a low grade headache for the rest of the day. I totally accept that this was not equivalent to having a bluebottle's trailing stingers wrapped around my abdomen as a surfer might, but still an interesting excursion.

Not a wise move.

You had luck that the thing was dead (fired most of their stinging cells) and that bluebottle doesn't sting normally if pick by the floater, but a several hours dead jellyfish is still perfectly able to scar your arm for life.

Some jellyfishes can left easily permanent scars, including nasty keloid scars that keep growing for years. A small encounter with a bluebottle can left marks visible five years after.

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