220 Br. G. Meymott Tidy [March 2, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 2, 1888. 



Edwaed Woods, Esq. M. Inst. C.E. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



C. Meymott Tidy, Esq. M.B. M.S. M.E.I. 

 (Professor of Chemistry and of Forensic Medicine at the London 



Hospital, &c.). 



Poisons and Poisoning. 



Toxicology is the science of " poisons and poisoning." How comes 

 " toxicology " to mean " the science of poisons " ? The Greek word 

 Toiov (derived perhaps from ruyxavw) signified primarily that specially 

 oriental weapon which we call " a bow." In the very earliest authors, 

 however, it included within its meaning " the arrow shot from the 

 bow." 



In the first century a.d. in the reign of Nero (a poisoner and a 

 cremation! st), Dioscorides, a Greek writer on Materia Medica, uses 

 the expression to to^lkov to signify " the poison for smearing arrows 

 with." Thus by giving an enlarged sense to the word — for words 

 ever strive to keep pace, if possible, with a scientific progress — we 

 get our modern and significant expression " Toxicology," the science 

 of poisons and poisoning. 



And there, in that little piece of philology (jo^ov and to^lkov — a bow 

 and a poison), you have not only the derivation of the word, but the 

 early history of my subject. 



A certain grim historical interest gathers around the story of 

 poisons and poisoning. It is a history worth studying, for poisons 

 have played their part in history. 



The " subtil serpent " taught men the power of a poisoned fang. 

 History presents poisoning in its first aspect in a far less repulsive 

 form than it has assumed in latter days — (fora world may grow wiser 

 and wickeder withal). Poison was in the first instance a simple 

 instrument of " open warfare." For this purpose our savage ancestors 

 tipped their arrows with poison in order that they might inflict 

 certain death on a hostile foe. It can scarcely be questioned that 

 the poison of the snake was the first material employed for this 

 object. The use of vegetable extracts (such as curarine, the active 

 principle of which is strychnine, and is employed at the present 

 time by certain uncivilised communities) belongs to a later period. 



And so the first use of poison was for an " open fight." It was 

 reserved for later times to mix the cup of kinship with a treacherous; 

 diabolical venom ! 



