Part of the long-running Studies in Imperialism series from Manchester University Press, this animal-centred account tracks the development of snake venom science in colonial Australia between 1840 and 1914. Across six thematic and broadly chronological chapters, Peter Hobbins demonstrates how animal experimentation to investigate the action of venoms and potential antidotes was practised widely across the antipodes. He seeks to write animals back into colonial science as sentient beings and indispensable (though unwilling) participants. Rather than authoritative assertions by individual investigators, venom science in Australia was characterized by ‘crowd participation and plebeian expertise’ (p. 164). Snakes loomed large in the Australian ‘ecology of dread’ (p. 3). Finding which were harmful and what to do when bitten were enduring preoccupations for white settlers as they co-colonized alongside their domesticated animals. But with relatively few cases of humans being bitten, the main way of determining which snakes were venomous was by observing the effects of bites on familiar animals. In the first half of the nineteenth century, these bites moved from accidental to very deliberate.
In his opening chapter, Hobbins elucidates his concept of the ‘colonial animal matrix’ to highlight the contingency of ethical, economic and affective valuations of animals. Attitudes towards animals were dynamic and relational, especially with respect to the domestic animals with which Europeans co-colonized the continent. Unfortunately for snakes, they were permanently anchored at the bottom of the hierarchy and their lowly status was transferred to the other animal participants in experiments, which were most commonly canine. But it was never simply a case of observing the effects of snakebite. Envenomation was consistently dogged by questions of proof. The recurrent tension over the relative validity of clinical experience and vivisection was mediated through individuals, professional bodies and state apparatus. The second chapter, focusing on lay expertise regarding snakebites and their treatment, shows that use of vivisection to investigate venom was not driven by clinicians and men of science. ‘Spruikers’, or itinerant pushers of alleged snakebite remedies, used the spectacle of public envenomation to attract attention to their wares. These antidote shows ‘foregrounded animal sacrifice as an intimate instantiation of a universal “natural” phenomenon’ (p. 47). The middle decades of the century were a transitional period where medical elites collaborated with pedlars who demonstrated their remedies on themselves and on animals.
A remarkable feature of the history of venom science is the role of fatal accidents resulting from rash behaviour, sometimes under the influence of alcohol, which caused public sensations and spurred fresh efforts to investigate venom. The death of a merchant in Melbourne from the bite of a Ceylonese cobra in 1867 directly led to the involvement of the University of Melbourne's first professor of anatomy, physiology and pathology, George Halford, in cobra venom research. The third chapter, which undertakes a Latourian ontology of venom, hinges around Halford's germ theory of snake poisoning, in which venom comprised living ‘germinal matter’ from the snake that interacted with host cells to produce a hybrid nucleated cell. Halford also proposed that cholera might be caused by the clouds of desiccated cobra venom from innumerable deceased snakes. Hobbins suggests that the most alarming aspect of the germinal theory of venom was its positing of human–non-human hybridity at a time of growing human identification with animals. Halford was a critical figure in mobilizing transnational networks along which letters, papers, snakes and venom travelled unevenly between Australia, Bengal, Britain and Philadelphia.
The promotion of intravenous injection of ammonia by Halford as a treatment for snakebite sparked acrimonious medical debates over the evidentiary worth of different practices across colonial Australia and India between 1868 and 1876, explored in the fourth chapter. The nature of proof was at stake, ‘pitting the testimonies of medical gentlemen against envenomed dogs’ (p. 85). Hobbins uncovers considerable intercolonial rivalry between investigators, which extended beyond methodologies to ideas about the relative toxicity of each other's snakes. Conflicting groups were united in the use of the hypodermic syringe, which was emblematic of experimentally controlled doses of venom and therapeutic. Syringes were components of new snakebite kits, which provided buyers with peace of mind even if on the rare occasions they were used they did as much harm as good.
In contrast with late Victorian Britain, Hobbins finds little moral opprobrium for vivisection in the Australian colonies, where pragmatic settlers more readily commoditized animals. Chapter 5 discusses the regulation of vivisection in the colony of Victoria, which was second only to Britain in legislating in this area in 1881. Hobbins shows that the regulation served mainly to protect human vivisectors rather than animal subjects, helping to define who counted as a suitable experimenter. Such was the apparent moral worth of finding a remedy to snakebite that consideration of the welfare of all animal participants in those experiments was negligible. The final chapter takes the account up to the First World War and investigates how Australian snakes and venoms intersected with the story of Albert Calmette's ‘universal’ antivenin which emerged from the Pasteur Institute in Saigon, situating venom science in respect of the quantitative turn in pathology, bacteriology and physiology after 1880. The data of venom science in the form of tracings, tables of numbers and microscopic observations pointed to the biochemical variability and geographical specificity of venoms, and confounded hopes that scientific medicine would provide a universal antidote.
This fascinating book remains enjoyable reading throughout, and deserves a broad audience far beyond historians of scientific medicine. An extensive and diverse range of primary sources and secondary literature has been consulted, and the book engages with numerous classic topics from the history of science, such as evidence, witnessing, expertise and authority. It serves also as a corrective to the still-dominant picture of colonials as collectors, and both highlights the specificity of Australian colonial science and reaffirms the need to focus on intercolonial circulations. It would have been valuable to learn more about Indigenous Australian conceptions of snakes and venoms. In its close treatment of the relationships between practitioners, snakes and dogs, Venomous Encounters is suggestive of how animals themselves have affected scientific practices.
