by mistake. Nine people were taken ill with sickness, vomiting, pain in the stomach and bowels; and one died in twelve days.[1] The symptoms under which this person died are not stated; but the account of the accident sent to Bernt imputed death to the poison,—which is improbable, considering the length of the interval before death.
In the same group with camphor and Cocculus indicus Orfila has arranged Upas antiar, a Javanese poison. This poison is a very bitter milky juice or extract, which is known in Europe only as an article of curiosity. It has been sometimes confounded with the Upas tieuté. It owes its properties to a neutral principle called antiarin.[2] From the experiments of MM. Magendie and Delille,[3] as well as from those of Sir B. Brodie[4] and of Emmert[5] it appears to act in the same manner, and to produce the same effects, as camphor and Cocculus indicus. In small doses it acts as an irritant; in large doses it causes convulsions and coma.
It is here noticed principally because it is one of the poisons which act violently on the heart. If the body of an animal be examined immediately after death from the Upas antiar, the heart is found to have lost its irritability, and the left ventricle to contain florid blood: Schnell found, that, like many other active poisons, it has no effect when applied to the divided end of a nerve.[6]
The Coriaria myrtifolia is also supposed by some to possess the properties of the present group, and is sufficiently important from its energy, and its occasional injurious effects on man, to claim some notice here.
Its toxicological action has been investigated by Professor Mayer of Bonn, who found that it excites in most animals violent fits of tetanus, giving place to apoplectic coma; and that in the dead body the brain is seen gorged with blood, the blood in the heart and great vessels fluid, the heart not irritable immediately after death, and the inner membrane of the stomach yellowish and shrivelled. A drachm of the extract of the juice killed a cat in two hours when swallowed; half a drachm applied to a wound killed another in eighty-five minutes; and six grains in the same way killed a kitten in three hours and a half. A drachm swallowed by a young dog killed it in two hours and a half. Ten grains of the extract of the infusion applied to a wound killed a kitten in six hours; and three grains another in three hours. A buzzard was killed in three-quarters of an hour by half a drachm of the extract of the juice. Frogs are also soon killed by it. Rabbits, it is remarkable, are scarcely affected by this poison, either administered internally, or applied to a wound,—a drachm in the former way, and half as much in the latter, having produced no effect at all. A grain, however, injected into the jugu-*
