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A POLONGA (Russell’s Viper) ATTACK OVER ONE HUNDRED  YEARS AGO IN TRINCOMALEE   (Reported by Dr Alfred Spaar in Spolia Zeylanica of May 1910) At midnight on April 6 1910, I was hastily summoned to see the late Mr MacIntyre, Postmaster of Trincomalee, who had been bitten by a Polonga. On arrival at his residence, thirty to forty minutes after the accident, I found him seated erect on a chair on his verandah. He was bathed in a cold, clammy sweat, and complained of feeling sick, and was vomiting continually. The ejected matter consisted of a few grains of boiled rice and water and bile stained fluid, and later on of glairy mucous. He had been attended to, within five or ten minutes of the accident, by a constable, who applied to the wound a black ‘snake-stone’ such as I have seen in the possession of ‘snake-charmers’. Internally, a remedy ...