52 On the poisonous HONEY 



innocent honey will often induce the fame flate of the 

 body, when it is eaten in large quantities, or when it 

 meets with an irritable ftate of the bowels. 



The honey which I call deleterious or poifonous 

 honey produces, as far as 1 have learned, the following 

 fymptoms, or effedls : viz. in the beginning, a dimnefs 

 of fight or vertigo, fucceeded by a delirium,* which is 

 'fometimes mild and pleafant, and fometimes ferocious ; 

 ebriety, pain in the ftomach and inteftines, convul- 

 fions, profufe perfpiration, foaming at the mouth, vomit- 

 ing, and purging ; and, in a few inftances, death. In 

 fome perfons, a vomiting is the firft effecl of the poifon. 

 When. this is the cafe, it is probable, that the perfons 

 fuffer much lefs from the honey than when no vomiting 

 is induced. Sometimes, the honey has been obferved 

 to produce a temporary palfy of the limbs ; an effedl 

 which 1 have remarked, in animals that have eaten of 

 one of thofe very vegetables -f from whofe flowers the 

 bees obtain a pernicious honey. 



Death is very feldom the confequence c;f the eating of 

 this kind of honey. ij: The violent impreflion which it 

 makes upon the ftomach and inteftines often induces an 

 early vomiting or purging, which are both favourable 

 to the fpeedy recovery of the fufferer. The fever which 

 it excites is frequently relieved, in a fhort time, by the 

 profufe perfpiration, and perhaps by the foaming at the 

 mouth. 1 may add, that as the human conflitution re- 



fifts, 



* An intelligent friend of mine related to me the cafe of a perfon who, 

 for a lliort time, was fevercly aifeded from the eating of wild honey, in 

 Virginia. He imagined that a perfon feized him rudely by one arm, and 

 then by the other. After this, he fell into convuliions, from which, 

 however, he recovered, in about an hour. It was imagined that this 

 honey was obtained from a kind of poiibnous mufhroom. 



f The Kalmia latifolia, 



■^ We lliall afterwards fee, that not one of Xenophon's men died from 

 the deleterioits honey which they had eaten, in large quantities, on the 

 fliorcs of the Euxine-Sea. 



