INTRODUCTION. 9 



poisonous effects of poisoned mushrooms. Some years ago I 

 read an account of a professor on therapeutics in a southern 

 medical college, examing a class in that branch. He put the 

 question, viz: " In what manner does tanin act as an antidote 

 to mushroom poisoning ? ' ' After a few minutes deliberation 

 one of the class pretended he knew, whereon the professor told 

 him to give it. " He at once commenced by saj-ing that he 

 believed that tanic acid united with the mush of the mushroom 

 and formed an insoluble tanate of mush, and there would be 

 less room for the poison to act." The best antidote for 

 counteracting the toxic effects of amanitine is undoubtedly 

 atropia sulph. in heroic doses, pushed to dilitation of the pupils 

 or the physiological effects. Doctor Shadle, of Shenandoah, 

 as reported by Capt. Charles Macllvaine, of Philadelphia, in 

 the Medical and Sin^gical Reporter^ December 12, 1885, gives 

 his treatment of a family treated with atropia. 



The Italian use daturine, the alkaloid of the Datura stramo- 

 nium, similar in properties to the atropia. 



The chemistry of fungi is as 3^et very meagre ; but there is 

 little doubt that not only does the composition vary greatly in 

 different species, as proved b}^ their toxic or innocent proper- 

 ties, containing more or less of the poisonous alkaloid. They 

 contain a relative proportion of proteid to the carboh3^drates. 



As they are the creatures of darkness and do not require 

 sunlight, and instead of exhaling oxj^gen and appropriating 

 carbon of carbon dioxide like the higher plants do, that chem- 

 ical process is reversed, similar to that of the animal kingdom, 

 that is, exhaling carbon dioxide. The most wonderful vi to- 

 chemical action in fungi is displayed in the change of color of 

 the flesh : there is hardly a tint of color that is not produced by 

 breaking or bruising a fleshy fungi — golden j^ellow by different 

 species of Lactarius, vivid blue by some of the Boleti, with 

 some it is slow in changing or oxydizing, but in some it is 



