A Cure for Serpents A Cure for Serpents A Cure for Serpents: A Doctor in Africa is a 1955 travel book by Alberto Denti di Pirajno, later the Duke of Pirajno, an Italian doctor, writer and former colonial governor of Tripoli. Set in Libya, Ethiopia and Somaliland, the book is a collection of anecdotes about various places he visited in his work as a physician in North Africa in the 1920s and the people he met, which includes tribal chieftains, Berber princes, courtesans and Tuareg tribesmen and of a lioness, which became part pet and part guard. The book was translated into English in
Caduceus (horse) and Sailor's Guide as the only horses bred in Australia or New Zealand to have achieved this distinction at that time. He was an inaugural inductee into the New Zealand Trotting Hall of Fame with the immortals Cardigan Bay, Harold Logan, Highland Fling, Johnny Globe and Ordeal. Without doubt the most memorable is that which took place on 13 February 1960 at Harold Park Paceway, Sydney, when the "mighty atom" Caduceus from New Zealand defeated Australia's Apmat in the final of the Inter Dominion before a world record crowd of 50,346. Caduceus and Apmat had been singled out as the