NAT. ORDER. SPATHACEiE. 



131: 



whicli are attached to the base of the bulb. The flowers have been 

 found to possess similar virtues with the bulb and seeds, but have uot 

 been adopted in the pharmacopoeias. 



Medical Properties and Uses. Colchicum Autumnale is one of 

 he most active medicines ever introduced into medical practice. It 

 possesses diaijhoretic, diuretic, cathartic, and emetic properties. Baron 

 Stoerck asserts, that on cutting the fresh root into slices, the acrid par- 

 ticles emitted from it irritated the nostrils, fauces, and breast, and that 

 ' ■ ' the ends of the fingers with which it had been held, became for a time 

 benumbed ; that even a single grain in a crumb of bread, taken inter- 

 nally, produced a burnmg heat and pain in the stomach and bowels, 

 urgent strangury, tenesmus, colic pains, cephalalgia, hiccup, &c. From 

 this account we need not be surprised that we find so many melan- 

 choly instances recorded where it has proved a fatal poison both to 

 man and brute animals ; also of its effects upon children, who have 

 accidentally partaken of the bulbs, in whom it occasioned tlie symp- 

 toms alone. Two boys, after eating this plant, which they found 

 growing in a meadow, died in great agony. Violent symptoms have 

 been produced by taking three of the flowers ; the seeds also will pro- 

 duce the same effect. Deer, oxen, and other animals have fallen a 

 sacrifice to this poison ; and according to Stoerck two drachms of the 

 root killed a dog in thirteen hours, and upon opening its abdomen the 

 stomach and bowels were found to be greatly inflamed, or in a gan- 

 grenous state. When applied to the skin it produces similar effects as 

 when taken into the stomach, which must depend on its being absorbed 

 and taken into the circulation. 



