Word: snaked
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Mostly Illegal. Mullins' conviction-the first under Virginia's snake-handling law in 21 years-was a reminder that the use of serpents in worship is still alive in the mountain villages of Southern Appalachia. Across rural Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, dozens of small fundamentalist churches regularly include the handling of rattlers or copperheads as part of their services. How many snake handlers there are is not really known. Generally they are as secretive as moonshiners, and for much the same reason: the cult is illegal except in West Virginia...
...Snake handling, which has been practiced in the South since the turn of the century, is based on Jesus' words in Mark 16: "In my name they will cast out demons; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it will not hurt them." The snakes, which are kept in special boxes by leaders of the congregation, are usually brought out as the climax to frenzied revival meetings that may last for as long as four hours. "When the ecstasy of the Lord is upon you and you take up serpents," explains Mullins, "you have...
...snake that striketh at the jeet of the hunter is naught but a pain in the grass...
Died. Constantine John Philip Ionides, 67, the legendary Snake Man of East Africa, whose slithery pets often bit the hand that fed them; of coronary thrombosis; in Nairobi. Sandhurst-trained lonides felt more at home among animals than among men, whom he called "the least interesting of all animals." A devoted herpetologist, he discovered four new species of snakes and hunted down 22 rare species of mammals for the world's zoos and museums. Even after his legs were amputated because of illness, he continued to stalk the bush-in a wheelchair...
...1950s, the Menninger brothers wrought a transformation at the nearby state hospital. Thanks to their lobbying, the old snake pit was replaced by attractive modern buildings. Topeka State abandoned its bars, chains and straitjackets and began returning "incurable" mental patients from the shadows of its back wards. (One woman was released after 53 years in confinement.) Kansas led the states in the modernity and humanity of its approach to mental illness, and its budget of $8 a day for a patient's care was about the nation's highest. But that was a dozen years...