POISONING FROM FUNGI 35 



since there are so many good ones against which no charge of evil has ever 

 been established." 



A second very poisonous species is the White or Deadly Amanita (Amanita 

 phalloides), common also in some parts of the United States. This species is 

 described in another part of this work. This and allied species are eaten 

 ignorantly by persons who do not know the nature of the powerful poison 

 found in the plant. Prof. Ford says, "A small amount of the fresh material is 

 sufficient to cause profound illness with fatal outcome, so potent is the poison 

 contained in its meshes, and the raw plant seems usually more toxic than the 

 cooked specimens. 



"Two or three 'deadly amanitas' suffice to bring on disastrous results, and 

 Plowright reports the death of a child of twelve from eating a third of the 

 pileus of a small raw plant. The extreme toxicity of this species illustrates 

 the dangerous consequences which the admixture of two or three specimens to 

 a dish of edible mushrooms entails. 



''Following the consumption of the fungi there is a period of six to fifteen 

 hours during which no symptoms of poisoning are shown by the victims. This 

 corresponds to the period of incubation of other intoxications or infections. 

 The first sign of trouble is sudden pain of the greatest intensity located in the 

 abdomen, accompanied by vomiting, thirst and choleraic diarrhoea with mucous 

 and bloody stools. The latter symptom is by no means constant. The pain 

 continues in paroxysms often so severe as to cause the peculiar Hypocratic 

 facies, "la face vulteuse" of the French, and though sometimes ameliorated 

 in character, it usually recurs with greater severity. The patients rapidly lose 

 strength and flesh, their complexion assuming a peculiar yellow tone. After 

 three to four days in children and six to eight in adults the victims sink into 

 a profound coma from which they cannot be roused and death soon ends 

 the fearful and useless tragedy. Convulsions rarely if ever, occur and when 

 present indicate, I am inclined to believe, a mixed intoxication, specimens of 

 Amanita muscaria being eaten with phalloides. The majority of individuals 

 poisoned by the "deadly amanita" die, the mortality varying from 60 to 100 

 per cent, in various accidents, but recovery is not impossible when small amounts 

 of the fungus are eaten, especially if the stomach be very promptly emptied, 

 either naturally or artificially." 



Kobert isolated from the fungus, a substance which he called phallin, 

 and which had the property of disolving the red blood corpuscles. Such 

 substances are called hemolysins. Prof. Ford says, v 'Very minute traces of this 

 substance brought in contact with the red blood cells of man or with those of 

 animals, produced within a short space of time, fifteen minutes to one or two 

 hours, a complete solution of these corpuscles a laking of the blood. So 

 powerful was the hemolytic action that even in a dilution of 1-125,000 it was 

 still operative upon the red cells of ox blood." 



In a recently published statement by Prof. Ford it appears that * the fungus 

 always contains another poison which differs from hemolysin in being resistent 

 to heat and digestion, "the blood-laking substance phallin, being destroyed by 

 heating to 70 C., and by the action of the digestive ferment. This substance 

 he called Amanita-toxin, and the blood-laking substance Amanita-hemolysin. 

 Abel and Ford 2 have shown that the so-called phallin, regarded by Kobert as 



1 Science N. S. 30:101. 



2 Jour. Biol. Chem. 2:273; 1907. 



