The Strychnos tieuté is the plant which yields the Upas tieuté, one of the Javanese poisons. This substance has been analyzed by Pelletier and Caventou, and found to contain strychnia.[1] From the experiments of Magendie and Delille, the Upas tieuté appears to be almost as energetic as strychnia itself.[2] Mayer found that the bark of the plant which yields it, when applied in the dose of fifty grains to a wound, killed a rabbit in two hours and a half.[3] Dr. Darwin has given an account of its effects on the Javanese criminals, who used formerly to be executed by darts poisoned with the tieuté. The account quoted by him is not very authentic; yet it accords precisely with what would be expected from the known properties of the poison. He says, that a few minutes after the criminals are wounded with the instrument of the executioner, they tremble violently, utter piercing cries, and perish amidst frightful convulsions in ten or fifteen minutes.[4] Of Poisoning with False Angustura Bark.
Besides these poisons of the genus Strychnos, the present group comprehends another, of the same properties, which was once supposed to be derived from a plant of a different family, the Brucea antidysenterica.
A species of bark, commonly called the false angustura bark, was introduced by mistake into Europe instead of the true angustura, cusparia, or bark of the Galipea officinalis. It was long supposed to be the bark of the Brucea antidysenterica; but it is now known to be the bark of S. nux vomica.[5] It is a poison of great energy. It gave rise to so many fatal accidents soon after its introduction, that in some countries on the continent all the stores of angustura were ordered to be burnt. It contains a less proportion of strychnia, but more of the alkaloid brucia than nux vomica, the seed of the plant.
According to Andral, brucia is twenty-four times less powerful than strychnia;[6] but the bark itself is as strong nearly as nux-vomica, for Orfila found that eight grains killed a dog in less than two hours.[7]
The symptoms it induces are the same as those caused by nux vomica. They are minutely detailed in a paper by Professor Emmert of Bern.[8] It appears that during the intervals of the fits the sensibility is remarkably acute: a boy who fell a victim to it implored his physician not to touch him, as he was immediately thrown into a fit. Professor Marc of Paris was once violently affected by this poison, which he took by mistake for the true angustura to cure ague.
- ↑ Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. xxvi. 44.
- ↑ Orfila, Toxicol. Gén. ii. 364.
- ↑ Journal de Chim. Méd. vi. 593.
- ↑ Botanic Garden, ii. 256.
- ↑ See my Dispensatory, p. 395. Orfila adheres to the old error in the last edition of his Toxicology, in 1843.
- ↑ Magendie, Journ. de Physiologie, iii. 267.
- ↑ Toxicol. Gén. ii. 377.
- ↑ Ueber die giftige Wirkungen der unächten Angustura.—Hufeland's Journal, xl. iii. 68.
