Snakes Series - II (Venom & Anti venom)

VENOM AND ANTI VENOM

THE IN BETWEEN SECRETS….

Anti-venom is not a synthetic medicine. It is a man-made animal blood juice out of animal dedication & sacrifice which includes the snake itself. 

Snakes, we always think as aggressive, ferocious creatures, forgetting the very fact that any creature will turn to be aggressive if they feel a threat to their habitat and survival. 

But what I would like to share with you here are the information about how animals sacrificing themselves including the snakes to save the human victim. 

Venom was not made against man.Snake venom is actually a kind of highly evolved salivary secretion which is used to both kill and digest their prey.. There are two basic types of snake venom. Neurotoxin, the one affects the nerves (venom of cobra and common krait); the other the one blood, hemotoxin (that of vipers).

Snake envenoming is a major public health issue in the rural tropics with large numbers of envenoming and deaths. There are nearly 3000 different species of snakes found in the world of which approximately 300 are venomous, that is only 10-15%.

The only cure for the snakebite, which is available, is anti-venom serum injection. 

Anti-venom is not a synthetic medicine. It is a man-made animal blood juice (!), out of animal dedication & sacrifice which includes the snake itself. 

Snake venom is a cocktail of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different proteins and enzymes. Many of these proteins are harmless but a percentage of them are toxins.

Albert Calmette demonstrated that it was possible to “hyper-immunize” an animal against snake bite by graduated and increased regular dosage administered in that animal with the venom of snake. He further demonstrated that a second animal could be saved after snakebite by introducing the serum of the immunized creature.

The process involves from rearing of snakes, extraction of venom from their mouth, preserving and attenuating (making less potent and harmless to host animal), regular and graduated injections into the host animal, drawing of blood from the hyper immunized host and preparation of serum.

The production of serum from single venom is known as “monovalent” anti-venom ,when a cocktail of venoms is used in the hyper-immunization process the serum produced is a “polyvalent” serum and is effective against a range of venoms.

Many animals like Rabbit ,sheep are used as host. The animal of choice is the horse. Camels and chicken are new entries.

But what is relieving are few modern modifications that have been introduced. The host animals are now given formaldehyde neutralized venom which removes a lot of the earlier suffering such animals endured. The animals are also not put to death; rather the rest of the blood is transfused back into the animal.
Still more interesting informations are there about HUMAN vs SNAKES which I would like to share with you later. OK?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you a new visitor? Please don't miss to read : Click Over

Snakes Series: Part I  (Cobra Pearl / Gem - Real or Fake?)