Real-life horror: How a scientist's harrowing death-by-snake in the 1950s inspired the movie 'Killer Shrews'

Real-life horror: How a scientist's harrowing death-by-snake in the 1950s inspired the movie 'Killer Shrews'

Karl P Schmidt documented his harrowing symptoms from a deadly snake bite as his condition deteriorated

Published: March 27, 2025 at 11:37 am

In the 1959 B-movie The Killer Shrews, scientist Dr Baines is bitten by one of these giant, venomous mammals (think labradoodles with fangs) and spends his dying moments selflessly recording his symptoms for the sake of humanity.

The scene may sound entertainingly ridiculous, yet it is based on the remarkable final days of a real scientist who died just a couple of years earlier.

Who was Karl P Schmidt?

Karl P Schmidt was a herpetologist at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. He spent a long and productive career travelling the globe in search of reptiles and amphibians, during which he described more than 200 species and wrote nearly 150 scientific books and papers.

In the end it wasn't a mutant insectivore that got him, but a boomslang snake brought to the museum for identification by a local zoo. After he was bitten on the thumb - the result of a lapse in concentration while handling the animal - Schmidt went home and started taking notes on the venom's effects, about which very little was known at the time.

His notes make harrowing reading: "Bleeding of mucous membranes in the mouth began about 5.30pm, apparently mostly from gums... Urination at 12.20am mostly blood... A good deal of abdominal pain, continuing to 1.00pm, only adequately relieved by belching." At this point, things start to get really grisly.

The next morning, however, Schmidt was feeling perkier, and telephoned the museum to say he would be in the following day. He didn't make it By 3pm ha had died of respiratory failure.

This website is owned and published by Our Media Ltd. www.ourmedia.co.uk
© Our Media 2025