centipedes are active, a bite causes inflammation which can last for up to three days, and a bite on the finger can cause the hand and lower half of the forearm to become swollen.
The effect of centipede venoms has also been investigated by injecting it into various animals. A man named Briot in about 1904 injected the venom of a French centipede into rabbits. Paralysis in the hind leg, edema, then an abcess and death seventeen days later were caused by 2cc of the venom. An injection of 3cc into a second rabbit caused death in one minute. Briot stated that the effect of the venom was like that of a viper's bite, causing almost immediate paralysis and necrosis.
I let a very large example of Chilopoda gnaw on my middle finger the other day. I caught it in a rotting stump and held it in my cupped hands, thinking it would not notice that I was a possible enemy. But it did notice, and I was envenomated, though only mildly.
I have been plagued by strange occurrences, which lead me to doubt my own mind. In the night I wake up and find some of the snakes crawling free about the quarters. A door locked the night before will certainly be found unlocked the next morning. Then there are the dreams: a grotesquely tall figure, thin as a bone and high as the ceiling, stands over my bed and watches me as I sleep. I try to wake up but I cannot. Malaria must be the cause of these visions, unless it's that damnable Atah. I don't know what he could be putting in the food. He seems such a friendly fellow, but you never know with them. He is bringing me some gruel this evening, and perhaps I shall ask him to share in my humble meal. Then we shall see what is the score!
Yours most devotedly,
Dean Ripa.
The town of Esmeraldas clusters around a small, deep lagoon reached by sea through a narrow channel. The lagoon is encircled by wooded mountains that reach, in places, an altitude of 3,000 feet.
During the six-hour crossing from Trinidad there was a fresh sea breeze, but as the boat turned into the lagoon the breeze died off and a heavy, oppressive heat enveloped the boat. The lagoon, shut in by surrounding hills, was dead calm and stagnant. I searched the hillsides for signs of habitation, but there were none. Certainly it must be cooler in the hills, and there would be a breeze.
The boat glided to a halt. Our luggage was dumped onto the pier. The sailors did not even wait for a tip. They rushed back to the boat, which reversed, turned in the lagoon, and headed out through the channel. I looked around from the rotting pier to the mud streets and the houses beyond, shacks that had been thatched at one time, with galvanized iron nailed on over rotting thatch giving the roofs a patchy, leprous look.
What I felt from my first contact with Esmeraldas was a feeling of depression and horror such as I have never experienced anywhere else.
I have been in high mountain towns in the Andes . . . thirteen, fourteen thousand feet, and bitter cold at midday. Everyone wears a gray felt hat, and after sundown, a scarf around the face, eyes red with smoke. The sod houses have no chimneys, just a drafty hole in the roof. There are strange skin diseases, sometimes confined to a single, desolate valley: great purple growths on the face, or hunchbacks with their soft humps like rotten melons. Guinea pigs scuttle across the earth floors— they eat them, and another source of food is frogs in the icy shallow ponds on the high plains.
I have traveled in villages in the Sahara, the desert flies thick as black cloth on the table at the only hotel. Flies .. . flies ... you couldn't get a forkful to your mouth before the flies were on it. I have seen the cemeteries of the hairy Ainu . . . erect phalluses on the male graves, crudely carved in wood and painted with ochre, the phalluses split apart and covered with the drifting snow. Yes, I have seen many scenes of desolation, but nothing like the dead, inhuman fog of oppression and evil that covered
The effect of centipede venoms has also been investigated by injecting it into various animals. A man named Briot in about 1904 injected the venom of a French centipede into rabbits. Paralysis in the hind leg, edema, then an abcess and death seventeen days later were caused by 2cc of the venom. An injection of 3cc into a second rabbit caused death in one minute. Briot stated that the effect of the venom was like that of a viper's bite, causing almost immediate paralysis and necrosis.
I let a very large example of Chilopoda gnaw on my middle finger the other day. I caught it in a rotting stump and held it in my cupped hands, thinking it would not notice that I was a possible enemy. But it did notice, and I was envenomated, though only mildly.
I have been plagued by strange occurrences, which lead me to doubt my own mind. In the night I wake up and find some of the snakes crawling free about the quarters. A door locked the night before will certainly be found unlocked the next morning. Then there are the dreams: a grotesquely tall figure, thin as a bone and high as the ceiling, stands over my bed and watches me as I sleep. I try to wake up but I cannot. Malaria must be the cause of these visions, unless it's that damnable Atah. I don't know what he could be putting in the food. He seems such a friendly fellow, but you never know with them. He is bringing me some gruel this evening, and perhaps I shall ask him to share in my humble meal. Then we shall see what is the score!
Yours most devotedly,
Dean Ripa.
The town of Esmeraldas clusters around a small, deep lagoon reached by sea through a narrow channel. The lagoon is encircled by wooded mountains that reach, in places, an altitude of 3,000 feet.
During the six-hour crossing from Trinidad there was a fresh sea breeze, but as the boat turned into the lagoon the breeze died off and a heavy, oppressive heat enveloped the boat. The lagoon, shut in by surrounding hills, was dead calm and stagnant. I searched the hillsides for signs of habitation, but there were none. Certainly it must be cooler in the hills, and there would be a breeze.
The boat glided to a halt. Our luggage was dumped onto the pier. The sailors did not even wait for a tip. They rushed back to the boat, which reversed, turned in the lagoon, and headed out through the channel. I looked around from the rotting pier to the mud streets and the houses beyond, shacks that had been thatched at one time, with galvanized iron nailed on over rotting thatch giving the roofs a patchy, leprous look.
What I felt from my first contact with Esmeraldas was a feeling of depression and horror such as I have never experienced anywhere else.
I have been in high mountain towns in the Andes . . . thirteen, fourteen thousand feet, and bitter cold at midday. Everyone wears a gray felt hat, and after sundown, a scarf around the face, eyes red with smoke. The sod houses have no chimneys, just a drafty hole in the roof. There are strange skin diseases, sometimes confined to a single, desolate valley: great purple growths on the face, or hunchbacks with their soft humps like rotten melons. Guinea pigs scuttle across the earth floors— they eat them, and another source of food is frogs in the icy shallow ponds on the high plains.
I have traveled in villages in the Sahara, the desert flies thick as black cloth on the table at the only hotel. Flies .. . flies ... you couldn't get a forkful to your mouth before the flies were on it. I have seen the cemeteries of the hairy Ainu . . . erect phalluses on the male graves, crudely carved in wood and painted with ochre, the phalluses split apart and covered with the drifting snow. Yes, I have seen many scenes of desolation, but nothing like the dead, inhuman fog of oppression and evil that covered
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