VOL. LXVI.] VHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. lOQ 



Some of this ship's company having eaten of fish which were afterwards 

 supposed to be poisonous, Mr. Patten, the surgeon, ordered some warm water 

 to be drunk, in order to make the patients vomit : which a httle relieved some 

 of them. After the nausea had ceased, he gave some weak portable soup, as 

 a diluent; and for the most troublesome symptom, viz. the heat on the surface 

 of the body, he prescribed a sudorific julep, the active ingredients of which 

 were the antimonial wine and spiritus mindereri. This brought on a breathing 

 sweat, which, for a time, abated the violence of the pains. No other medicines 

 were used, except some purging salts, for preventing inflammation, in '2 or 3, whose 

 mouths and throats had been more particularly affected. Their diet consisted 

 chiefly of tea, sago, and portable soup. Mr. A. has omitted saying any thing about 

 the manner in which the poison operates, as the instances were too few, to draw 

 any certain consequences from them ; but only observes, that its action may be 

 such, as to affect and deprave some of the organs of sensation, without much 

 irritiiting the first passages ; because in all the patients the disorder of the 

 stomach and bowels had long ceased before the other symptoms went off". And 

 he was confirmed in this opinion by a circumstance which afterwards happened 

 to Capt. Cook, who, having eaten a small piece of the liver of another kind of 

 fish (a tetraodon)* was not sensible of being hurt by it, till waking iu the night, 

 and calling for a draught of water, he neither could feel the vessel with his 

 hands, nor was sensible of its weight when he grasped it. On the other hand, 

 it was remarked, that some of the other gentlemen, who had likewise eaten of 

 that fish, had also a vomiting and looseness. The difference perhaps depended 

 on the quantity taken into the stomach, and the particular constitution of the 

 person. 



July 23d, 1774, on board his majesty's ship the Resolution, off the Island 

 Malicolo, in the South Sea, 3 fish, of the same species, that had been caught, 

 being dressed for dinner, affected all those who ate of them in an uncommon 

 manner ; but 5 persons, who had eaten of one of them, were more severely 

 attacked than the rest. Immediately after eating, nothing was felt but some 

 uneasiness, or such pain as follows from swallowing any acrid substance, in the 

 mouth and throat. About 2 in the afternoon, some felt an uneasiness in the 

 stomach, with an inclination to vomit ; but it was near the evening before those 

 who suffered most were affected. The symptoms at first were universal lassitude 



ocellatus, and the Sparus Pagrus of Linnaeus. It has been supposed, with great appearance of 

 truth, that when such consequences follow, they have been owing rather to the food of the fish, 

 than to any thing inherently poisonous in its flesh. Many marine animals among the tribe of 

 Mollusca are of a highly acrimonious and irritating nature, and the fish which prey upon them are 

 more or less imbued with the acrimonious juices of such animals. 



* Tetrodon ocellatus ? Linn. This fish, unless very carefvJly cleaned before eating, is said to 

 have often proved fatal in the space of two hours. 



