IHE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



315 



ing blood. Obstinate constipation exist- 

 ed throughout. The boy was saved by 

 vigorous treatment. The one who had 

 eaten the flowers suffered considerably, 

 and for a considerable time, from vertigo 

 with some headache, but the symptoms 

 were not very serious. Dr. Christison 

 observed that both the berries and the 

 flowers are known to kill fowls which 

 feed upon them, and that when the ber- 

 ries are freely eaten they often cause 

 giddiness. He also quotes a report of a 

 case of a woman who dressed the shoots 

 with vinegar and ate them as a salad, and 

 who was promptly seized with violent 

 purging, forty times in two days, coma 

 resulting on the third day. Of our own 

 species, S. Canadensis, Dr. Johnson states 

 that the bark and the root are actively 

 cathartic and hydragogue when freely 

 used. There is little doubt that he refers 

 in this instance to the bark and the root 

 in the dried condition, and it is well- 

 known that the properties become much 

 less active upon drying and keeping. 



Our most direct evidence bearing upon 

 the poisonous character of the elder- 

 berry root rests upon a case which occur- 

 red in the spring of 1894, at tne * n " 

 stitution of Mercy, a Roman Catholic 

 institution for children at Tarrytown, 

 on the Hudson, and which attracted a 

 great deal of attention at the time in 

 the public press. The grounds of this 

 institution were comparatively new, and 

 ditching and fencing were still in progress 

 at the time stated. A workman in dig- 

 ging a drain, uncovered a large number 

 of roots to which the children took a 

 fancy and which they began eating. 

 Within a very few minutes, and while 

 still engaged in eating, a large number of 

 the boys were seized with convulsions 

 and several of them died. One of them 

 had the remainder of the root, the marks 

 of his teeth upon it, still clutched in his 

 hand after death. The symptoms corres- 



ponded in most features to those of the 

 Cicuta poisoning above described, 

 and to that agent the accident was as- 

 cribed in the public press. Several 

 months later I visited the institution in 

 company with Mr. Frederick V. Coville, 

 the botanist of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture and Prof. Edward 

 L. Greene, Professor of Botany, in the 

 Catholic University at Washington. At 

 this time, and subsequently through cor- 

 respondence, a pretty thorough investiga- 

 tion of the case was made. We found 

 that it was not a locality where Cicuta 

 would be apt to grow and no evidence 

 existed that any had grown there. Three 

 poisonous plants grew upon the spot, 

 viz., the locust, poke-berry and elder. 

 The workman who had dug the drain, 

 the surviving boys and the Sisters in 

 attendance were positive that it was the 

 elder root which had occasioned the 

 poisoning. They did not know 

 the name of the plant, and had ac- 

 cepted the statements of the papers that 

 it was Cicuta ; but they positively iden- 

 tified it by its appearance and by the 

 young purple shoots and compound leaves 

 which they had observed carefully while 

 still attached to the pieces of root which 

 had been taken from the hands of the 

 boys poisoned. Their story was so clear, 

 connected and positive that it was diffi- 

 cult to doubt that the elder root was the 

 poisoning agent. Furthermore the locust 

 would not have produced the symp- 

 toms that were observed; and the poke 

 should have at once been distinguished 

 by even a casual observer. Neverthe- 

 less, since the root was described as "like 

 a carrot or parsnip," and since the symp- 

 toms in some respects resembled those of 

 Pokeroot poisoning, the question cannot 

 be regarded as settled beyond a doubt. 

 In the case of so large a number of vic- 

 tims it is even possible that both of the 

 roots were concerned. The attending 



