The Brazilian doctors who discovered that whiskey did not cure snakebites also came up with a clever way to fight the effects of venom on humans by using the same venom as an antidote. They realized that administering doses of venom, in gradually increasing doses to large animals, such as horses, the animals would develop antibodies in their immune system. The antibodies, called antivenin, fought off the venom.
Antivenin then was extracted from the hemoglobin of an immunized horse's blood, and, when the antivenin was introduced into the bloodstream of a snakebite victim, it became attached to the venom and stopped it from interfering with normal body processes.
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