Patrick Russell (herpetologist) - India

India

In 1781, a younger brother, Claud became a chief administrator of the East India Company at Vishakapatnam in Madras Province. Claud however suffered poor health and the family insisted that Patrick attend to him. Arriving in India, he began to study the natural history of the region. The naturalist to the East India Company in the Carnatic was Dr John Koenig, student of Carolus Linnaeus and when he died in 1785, the Governor of Madras personally offered the post of 'Botanist and Naturalist' to Patrick. This post, according to Ray Desmond (1992, European Discovery of Indian Flora) was:

The Company's expectations of their Naturalist were excessively optimistic. He was presumed to be a linguist, demographer, antiquarian, meteorologist, mineralogist and zoologist (in addition to being a botanist).

Russell wrote about the plant and animal life of Madras as he had of Aleppo. As a physician as well as a naturalist to the East India Company in the Carnatic he was concerned with the problem of snakebite and made it his aim to find a way for people to identify venomous snakes. He also made a large collection of plants. One of the snakes he identified was Katuka Rekula Poda which he noted was not well known to Europeans but was second only to the cobra in its lethality. Russell attempted to classify the snakes using the nature of scales but his quest was to find an easy way to separate the venomous snakes from the non-venomous. He conducted envenomation experiments on dogs and chicken and described the symptoms. He tested remedies claimed for snakebite including a pill from Tanjore which was very popular and found that it did not work. In one case a soldier in torpor was brought to him and the common treatment used by Europeans was tested. Two bottles of warm Madeira wine was forcibly poured into the patients mouth, who then completely recovered. Patrick, his brother Claud and the family left for England on January 1791. Some of the collections he made were placed in the museum at Madras although he took back some snake skins that are now in the collection of the Natural History Museum at London. Returning to England, he worked on the book on snake, which was to be published by the East India Company. The first volume of his An Account of Indian Serpents Collected on the Coast of Coromandel was published in 1796 with 44 plates. The second volume appeared in four parts, the first two of which were published in 1801 and 1802. These included 46 coloured plates. Patrick Russell died on 2 July 1805, three days after an illness. He was never married. The third and fourth parts of the second volume of his book was published after his death in 1807 and 1809. Two scientific papers were read on the pits of the pit viper Trimeresurus which he demonstrated as not being associated with hearing. Another paper demonstrated the voluntary mechanism by which the cobra spread its hood.