CICUTA VIROSA. 171 
pp. 135-76, 1679) gave an ounce of the root of this plant, cut 
into small pieces, to a dog; in half an hour the animal foamed 
at the mouth and vomited; violent convulsive movements 
ensued; at one time emprosthotonos, at another opisthotonos ; _ 
inability to remain still, and, on endeavouring to walk, falling on 
one side: this state lasted two hours. After death, livid spots 
were found along the whole of the alimentary canal. The same 
author made various experiments on dogs, wolves, and eagles, 
both with the root and the juice, and all gave analogous 
results. On examination after death, the alimentary canal was 
found inflamed, and sometimes gangrenous; the cavities of the 
heart were filled with blood, sometimes fluid, at others con- 
gealed. The lungs, often infiltrated and gorged with blood, 
seemed inflamed, as also was the liver. The cavities of the 
brain contained but little serosity ; the vessels of the brain were 
distended with black blood. 
Linneus gives the following account of the powerful effects 
of Cicuta on horned cattle :— 
“Here I was informed of a disease which had made great 
ravages amongst the cattle in this neighbourhood, and which 
was of so pestilential a nature that though the animals were 
flayed even before they were cold, wherever their blood had 
come in contact with the human body it had caused gangrenous 
spots and sores. Some persons had had both their hands swelled, 
and one his face, in consequence of the blood coming upon it; 
many people had lost their lives by it, insomuch that nobody 
would now venture to flay any more of the cattle. 
“Everybody at Tornea was continually talking to me of a 
distemper to which their horned cattle are subject, and which 
kills many of them in the course of the winter, when they lose 
from fifty to one hundred head of cattle almost every year. On 
walking to examine the meadow into which they are first 
turned out to grass, I found it was a bog or marsh where the 
Water Hemlock, Cicuta aquatica (Cicuta virosa, Engl. Bot.), 
gtew in abundance, and had evidently been cropped plentifully 
