It’s estimated that somewhere between one and five million people are bitten by snakes every year, with around 1/5 of those resulting in death. That number is a lot lower than it once was — several decades ago, antivenoms for deadly snakes were few and far between, so people frequently succumbed to bites. One such victim was American herpetologist Karl P. Schmidt.
Schmidt worked for the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago during his scientific career, and even was president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists from 1942 to 1946. He had handled countless deadly snakes. But in 1957, he made the mistake of underestimating a juvenile boomslang that Marlin Perkins, then the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo, had sent him for identification. He didn’t believe the snake could inject a lethal dose, so he didn’t seek medical treatment ...
