Horse antibodies - anti-venom

my son received pro fab antivenin which was made with sheep serum. much safer than the horse antibodies. but at nearly 30,000 dollars one might die of heart attack anyhow?

The first anti-venom in the world was developed about a hundred years ago at the Pasteur Institute based in Paris but with offshoots around the world. And the person who led the work was Calmette, the man who later produced the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis. The current head of snake venom research at L’Institut Pasteur is Dr Cassian Bon. He made this discovery in Vietnam when he had been sent there by Pasteur himself, to built the first Institut Pasteur overseas. And on this occasion, a flood occurred, and the snakes moved on to the dry area, and the people all do the same, and because of the high concentration of people and snake, a lot of snake bites occurred. He first used a cobra venom to immunise rabbits, and he observed that the rabbits became resistant to snake bite and a venom injection. He immediately realised the interest of this procedure for saving these people who have been bitten, and he produced a large quantity of serum using horses, and the first patient that has been treated with success was reported in 1896. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/hstories/hr140805.htm

This technology is years old. Here in our city, Thiruvananthapuram we have a research and production centre of anti venoms. Not onlu horses but cows, goats and rabbits are also used to culture antibodies to be harvested later. The first snake Antivenom was discovered in 1895 by Albert Calmette against the deadly Indian Naja Snake, better known as the Cobra. Since that time and through the beginning of the 19th century antivenins were also formulated for many venomous arachnids (spiders), scorpions and the Amphibia class of animals which includes poisonous frogs and toads. Thank you rockingmim.