F1IE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BO MBA Y. 67 



To add further evidence with regard to the poisonous nature of 

 Jatropha curcas I quote Sir Robert Christison of Edinburgh. He 

 observes that the seeds of the physic-nut of the West Indies, 

 " when applied in the form of powder to a wound, produce violent 

 spreading inflammation of the subcutaneous cellular tissue ; and when 

 introduced into the stomach they inflame that organ and the intestines. 

 Four seeds will act on man as a powerful cathartic. I have known 

 violent vomiting and purging occasioned by a few grains of tho 

 cake left after the expression of the fixed oil from the bruised seeds ; 

 and in some experiments, I performed a few years ago, I found that 

 from twelve to fifteen drops of the oil produced exactly the same effects 

 as an ounce of castor oil, though not with such certainty " as that of 

 castor oil, I presume. [K. R. K.*~], 



I offer to my readers the following quotation from A. S. Taylor's 

 Medical Jurisprudence (2nd Ed., Vol. I., p. 328) : — 



"In August 1858, 139 children in Dublin suffered severely from 

 eating some of these nuts, namely, of Jatropha curcas {Medical Times 

 and Gazette, August 1858). They all recovered." * * 



" M. Chevalier refers to a case in which thirty-three persons were 

 poisoned by eating these seeds. The symptoms which they suffered 

 from were nausea, vomiting, and general depression. Twenty were 

 so ill that they were placed in the beds of an hospital ; the remaining 

 thirteen soon recovered." 



In 1871, when a student in Grant Medical College, Bombay, I ate 

 two seed-almonds of Jatropha curcas which was then growing near 

 the Vehar water-pipe in the College garden in front of the Clock- 

 tower. I suffered from the effects of the almonds for fully six hour3, 

 though the nuts were pleasant to eat. My friend and fellow-student 

 Khan Bahadur Dr. K. B. Cooper, now Civil Surgeon of Shikarpur, 

 also ate some with me. Perhaps he will remember the incident. 

 I remember it very well, as the emssis it produced was very 

 trying. My medical attendant, Dr. Sakharam Arjun, of sacred and 

 loving memory, then living in the same house with mo, gave me a 

 word of warning not to play pranks with my life in the course of my 

 botanical studies by tasting unknown plants, merely for the sake of 

 experiment. Such foolhardiness, I know, has often destroyed valuable 

 lives. There is a saying in Marathi ^TrST^T Tl^T II fepCr ^f^T, 

 * Christiaon's Treatise on Poisonw, p. 591, '1th Edition. Edinburgh., 1^46. 



