A Field Museum scientist was bitten by a deadly snake and spent his final hours writing down every symptom

A renowned scientist, a deadly snakebite, and a diary that documented it (2025)

In 1957, Field Museum curator Karl Patterson Schmidt was bitten on the thumb by a boomslang, a rear-fanged African snake he was helping the Lincoln Park Zoo identify. Believing the bite minor, he rode home and recorded his symptoms hour by hour — nausea, chills, bleeding gums, bloody urine — until the diary breaks off. He died the next afternoon of respiratory paralysis, 68 years ago this week.