4 
31-3 
It has a perceptibly 
minute scales, fusible by heat and slowly soluble in water. 
alkaline reaction and yields crystallizable salts with acids,” 
Githagin.— Specific saponin, described under Aesculus Hippocastanum, 
page 43-4. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION.—The seeds of the cockle are said to be fre- 
quently allowed to adulterate the cheaper grades of flour in France, being inten- 
tionally ground with the wheat. Two 500 gram. (14% 0z.) lots of wheat flour, 
containing respectively 30 and 45 per cent. of these seeds, administered to two 
calves, caused severe cramps in the stomach within an hour, followed by diarrhcea, 
and finally death. Ducks and geese will eat of the seeds, but suffer death as above, 
and show post-mortem severe inflammation of the bowels.* In feeding my chickens 
“wheat screenings ” J have often noted that they always carefully avoid the cockle 
seeds ; not even the young chicks will pick up a single seed. : 
The following symptoms are noted by Dr. Allen; they were observed from 
eating bread made of flour contaminated by cockle seed: Coma, in some cases : 
vertigo; headache with a sensation of heat and burning rising into the vertex; 
mouth hot and dry ; nausea, sour and bitter vomiting ; burning, extending along the 
cesophagus, from the stomach into the throat; cutting pains in the stomach; diar- 
rhoea, with tenesmus and burning in the bowels and rectum; pulse at first small 
and rapid, then tense, hard, and slower; hot skin; tearing along the spine with 
impaired locomotion, and difficulty in maintaining an erect position. These symp- 
toms class the seeds among the cerebro-spinal irritants, 
DESCRIPTION OF PLATE 31. 
. End of a flowering branch, Ithaca, N. Y., June 13th, 1880. 
. ee 
. Flower. 
, Seed, & 25. 
b> wn 
(2 and 3 enlarged.) 
* Am. Four. Phar., 1879, p. 129; from Arch. d. Pharm., 1879, p. 87. 
+ Ency. Pure Mat. Med., vol. i, p. 132. 
