AMANITA. 25 



in Siberia," who describes the same exhiloratory effect on the inhabitants 

 of Siberia, it removed all doubts. There must be some peculiar idiosyn- 

 cracy, or what we might call toleration, of the Amanita poison similar to 

 opium on the Chinese and Turks. In medicine it is used by both schools, 

 homeopaths and allopaths. The allopaths use it as cardiac depressant, 

 night sweats, etc., but on account of care required in the administration, 

 it is seldom uses. The alkaloid is generally used (the sulphate of nuisca- 

 rine). The homeopaths use it more freely, for the provings show a 

 multitudinous application to some of the most critical diseases. 



This intoxicating property is imparted to all the secretions of the sub- 

 ject, especially the urine, which retains it for a long time. A man having 

 been intoxicated one day, slept himself sober by the next, will, by 

 drinking this liquor to some extent, become intoxicated again and again. 

 By this means, with a few fungi to commence with, a party may shut 

 themselves in their room and indulge in a week's debauch. 

 George Kennen says of a Korak marriage ceremony : 

 "After the conclusion of the marriage ceremony we removed to an 

 adjacent tent, and were surprised, as we came out into the open air, to see 

 three or four Koraks shouting and reeling about in an advanced stage of 

 intoxication — celebrating, I suppose, the happy event which had just 

 transpired. I knew that there was not a drop of alcoholic liquor in all 

 Northern Kamchatka, nor, so far as I knew, anything from which it 

 could be made, and it w^as a mystery to me how they had succeeded in 

 becoming so suddenly, thoroughly, hopelessly, undeniably drunk. Even 

 Ross Browne's beloved Washoe, with its ' howling wilderness ' saloons, 

 could not have turned out more creditable specimens of intoxicated 

 humanity than those before us. The exciting agent, whatever it might 

 be, was certainly as quick in its operation, and as effective in its results, 

 as any * tangle-foot ' or ' bottled lightning ' known to modern civilization. 

 Upon inquiry we learned to our astonishment that they had been eating 

 a species of the plant vulgarly known as toadstool. There is a peculiar 

 fungus of this class in Siberia, known to the native as ' muk-a-moor,' 

 and as it possesses active intoxicating properties, it is used as a stimulant 

 by nearly all the Siberian tribes. Taken in large quantities it is a violent 

 narcotic poison ; but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic 

 liquor. Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous 

 system, and its sale by Russian traders to the native has consequently 

 been made a penal offence by Russian law. In spite of all prohibitions, 

 the trade is still secretly carried on, and I have seen twenty dollars worth 

 of furs bought with a single fungus. The Koraks would gather it for 

 themselves, but it requires the shelter of timber for its growth, and is not* 



