Hissstory: how the science of snake bite treatments has changed
- Written by Peter Hobbins, ARC DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney
Summer is traditionally Australia’s snake bite season, when both snakes and people become more active. The human death toll is now admirably low, but it wasn’t always so.
Although colonial statistics are highly unreliable, in 1882-1892 about 11 people died from snake bites across Australia a year. Since then, the continent’s...