118 HISTORY OF 
in an annotation to Bish that the banyas or Indian traders living in the Kingdom 
of Ispahan use the root of the Bish or Napellus, or, as it is called in a: prescription 
on p. 319, *Napelli Indici, aridi, innoxii, vel antithorae," with their desserts and 
spices, and that he himself tasted of it. The action of the drug is that of a tonic 
and digestive. 
. This Bish, he adds, is taken particularly by the Indians who hail from Таба 
in Sind, then a flourishing commercial centre, and those people told him that the 
root was deadly if taken fresh and green, but was rendered inert and turned into 
а medicine by drying, whence he concluded it was a kind of Ал оға and antidote 
to Napellus. The 'latta people, he continues, believe that a little animal, resembling 
a mouse, which nibbles at the roots of the Nopellus and burrows assiduously around 
them, also is an eminent “ alexitarium " (antidote), Angelus describes finally the 
root in these terms: *'Radices porro Bisch omnino similes apparent ossiculis, seu 
vertebris mothuae piseis; levissimae sunt et candidae—foraminibus carie undique (ut 
ita dieam) fermentatae.” This Bish of Frater Angelus was evidently not the true 
poisonous Bish; but can it have been the root-tubers of Aconitum heterophyllum or 
А. palmatum, which are white, smooth, and, as they are found in the bazaars, more 
or less of the shape of bones? They too are recognised as tonics. This closes the 
early history of “bish—-” а quaint mixture of fiction and truth, lost at one end in 
the mist of the wisdom of ancient India, and dying out at the other in the barren 
traditions and reiterations of the Persian Pharmacopceas. ! 
А new phase in the history of the Indian Aconites commenced when, in the 
beginning of the last century, the British East India Company eame more intimately 
into contact with the tribes inhabiting that part of the Himalaya which had supplied 
India with Bish from the earliest times. 
In 1802 and 1803 F. Hamilton passed fourteen months in Nepal—mostly in the 
neighbourhood of Kathmandu. During this time and during а subsequent Stay of two 
is called Bish, Bikh, and Hodoya Bish or Bikh, nor am I cort 
ought to be referred to it or to the foregoing kind." | 
information concerning the Bikh poison, and in 1810 he se 
regions of tne Himalaya mountains beyond the sources of the Kosj 
to collect specimens, fruits, and seeds of the Alpine plants, 
particularly directed to procure the plant used in India for poi 
Edinb, Journ. е. і, 1824, р. 249) which in this case 
The results of this investigation were published by Hami 
Nepal in, 1819, and reprinted, accompanied by technical de 
barium specimens, in Brewster’s Edinb. Journ. Se. i. (1824), p. 24995 
ately Hamilton’s man had been sent too early in the year, | 
river. Не was 
1. Unfortun- 
returning in July with 
