Until the mid twentieth century Australia had no antivenom for the coastal taipan, and recorded bites were almost uniformly fatal. Producing one required a supply of venom, which required a live snake of a species few people could safely catch.
In July 1950 Kevin Budden, a Sydney amateur herpetologist in his twenties, captured a large taipan near Cairns. He was bitten while handling it but held on and passed the living snake to others so the venom could be extracted, then died of the envenomation the following day. That snake's venom fed the research programme at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, and a taipan antivenom was released in 1955.
The outcome changed sharply. Bites remain medical emergencies requiring rapid antivenom and often intensive care, but they are now survivable, and Australian snakebite deaths overall run to only a handful a year. The exact chain from that specific snake to the finished product has been told in several versions, so details differ between accounts.