Snake Bite Relief In a Nasal Spray

This was on BBC World last night. Snakebite kills over 125,000 people a year, and there is a crying need for better and more effective first aid (the test subject was the doctor himself):

Dr. Matt Lewin, an expedition medicine expert with the University of California, San Francisco, says he has hit on a way to produce a cheap, portable first-aid snakebite treatment that could change the way travelers and residents of third-world countries respond to the venomous threat.

"Just get rid of the needles," said Lewin, the director of the Center for Exploration and Travel Health at the California Academy of Sciences.

Instead of grappling with cumbersome syringes and complicated directions, an unfortunate snakebite victim could sniff a drug called neostigmine, which already is recommended for use intravenously to treat paralyzing bites.

The research is in its very early stages, but Lewin has put out a paper that describes an experiment with a single volunteer, a 45-year-old man who agreed to be chemically paralyzed – and then take the antidote. Twenty minutes later, the deadly symptoms were reversed, the paper reports.