BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CamBripce, Massacuusetrrs, Marcu 18, 1957 VoL. 17, No. 10 
THE ORDEAL POISONS OF 
MADAGASCAR AND AFRICA 
BY 
GEORGE L. Rogs 
INTRODUCTION 
THE conception and employment of various ordeals for 
the determination of guilt or innocence are not restricted 
to the history of the more primitive present-day cultures, 
for they were well known to the societies of our European 
ancestors. ‘The former practice of witch-dunking in Eng- 
land and Colonial America is still remembered as an 
evolutionary product of medieval witch trials. Under the 
same general principle falls Medieval Europe’s ordeal of 
the bier, in which a murderer’s guilt was said to have 
been established when his proximity to the victim’s body 
caused its wounds to bleed again. 
Although the above customs are physically different 
from ordeals by plant poisons, they serve as a link be- 
tween modern cultures and those of the primitive A fri- 
cans, affording aid in understanding how and why these 
practices were able to maintain such a powerful influence 
over the lives and thoughts of the people. Both types of 
trial were governed by the underlying belief in the pres- 
ence of a spirit who would distinguish, regardless of cir- 
cumstances, between the guilty and the innocent. 
Ancient Europe’s position in relation to this problem 
is easily sketched. Although occult evil existed in the 
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