08 vegetable poisons. 



Mons. do la Condamine says, in the abridged account of his voy- 

 age, that ** when he arrived at Cayenne, he had the curiosity to try 

 whether this poison, which he had kept above a year, still retained 

 its activity : and at the same time whether sugar was really as effi- 

 cacious a counter poison as he had been assured. Both the experi- 

 ments were performed, he says, in presence of the commandant 

 of the colony, of several officers of the garrison, and of the King's 

 physician. A hen, slightly wounded with one of these little arrows, 

 the point of which had been dipped in the poison thirteen months at 

 least before the trial, blown through a trunk, lived half a quarter 

 of an hour : another, pricked in the wing with one of these arrows, 

 newly dipped in this poison diluted with water, and immediately 

 drawn out of the wound, seemed to dose a minute after ; convul- 

 sions soon came on, and, though we had made her swallow some 

 sugar, she expired. A third, pricked with the same arrow, dipped 

 again into the poison, having been instantly assisted by the same re- 

 medy, shewed no sigus of being indisposed, &c." 



Mons. Herrissant was struck with amazement on reading these 

 facts : but his surprise was soon followed by a desire of repeating 

 those experiments himself, and even of trying them on different orts 

 of animals. Mons. de la Condamine, to whom he imparted his in- 

 tention, offered to satisfy his curiosity, and for that purpose made 

 him a present of a certain quantity of this poison ; and the result of 

 the experiments, which he made with this same poison, forms the 

 subject of this memoir. 



He begins the detail of those experiments by that of two acci- 

 dents, which had like to have disabled him from prosecuting the 

 work he had undertaken; having very narrowly escaped death. 

 The first accident happened thus : M. de la Condamine had fore- 

 warned him, that when the Indians designed to use their poison, 

 which in colour, consistence, and even in smell, has a great deal of 

 resemblance to Spanish liquorice, they dissolved it in water, and then 

 evaporated it on a slow fire to the consistence of a soft extract. 

 M. Herrissant made this preliminary preparation in a small closet, 

 in which a young lad was actually at work ; and he did not think 

 of making him quit it, because he did not imagine, that the poison, 

 of which he intended to make trial, could produce any bad effects, 

 without being introduced into the blood by the opening of a wound. 

 Nor did he then recollect, what M. de la Condamine had told him 3 



