[ Gentleman's Magazine ]
The Gentleman's Magazine was an important and influential monthly magazine in the 18th and 19th Centuries; it began in 1731, ceased regular publication in 1907, and shut down completely in 1922.
One of its features was letters from readers who were seeking advice or information. In the edition for May 1798, one reader wrote asking for help in dealing with snakebites to domestic animals. After explaining that he lives in an area frequented by a "viper" that is "about half a yard in length, often two inches in diameter, and beautifully striped, and that the bites of this viper are, when on the legs of animals, always fatal," he writes as follows:
Much valuable cattle, and many useful dogs have thus perished. Amongst other sufferers, I had the ill-luck last summer to lose in this manner a beautiful and excellent little Spaniel, worth ten guineas; whilst another of her species, and a Newfoundland dog, recovered, being only bitten about the head.
The rest of this letter, which is signed "A Friend to the Animal Creation," asks if any readers of the magazine might know of any treatments for such bites.
There is a response, in the June 1798 issue, from a "Wm. Young," who explains at length the treatments he applied to a snake-bite he himself received; he attributes his recovery in part to the application of "viper-oil," but largely to "cautery," the application of a heated knife-blade, in this case, to the site of the puncture.