THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 41 



being ". He never smoked the leaves for committing suicide as 

 some persons are known to have eaten them, or the seeds for self- 

 destruction. He has for a long time smoked the leaves to find 

 relief from the asthmatic fits to which even now he is a subject as 

 an inmate of the Ratnagiri Lunatic Asylum. Of course he gets no 

 Datura smoke in the Asylum. 



Professor Robert Christison, of Edinburgh University, says that 

 the cases of poisoning from Thorn-Apple which occurred in his 

 country ( Scotland ) up to the time he published his work on Poi- 

 sons ( 1845 ), were all accidental. There are several such instances 

 of accidental poisoning in other countries. Thus for instance, in 

 America, in 17b'5, when some of the British troops under Sir 

 John Sinclair were stationed in the vicinity of Elizabeth Town 

 (New Jersey), three of the soldiers collected some quantity of 

 the Datura plant which they mistook for the safe simple table-oreen 

 food named Chenopodium album, dressed it, and ate it. "* One of 

 these soldiers became furious and ran about like a madman; the second 

 was seised with genuine tetanus and died; what happened to the third 

 is not mentioned. Beck on the authority of Orfila, cites a case in 

 which a man after having been poisoned with the Thorn-Apple sur- 

 vived, and was cured of an intense long-standing headache. Even the 

 bruising of the leaves of Datura in a mortar is known to have caused 

 dilatation of the pupil. The application of bruised leaves of Datura on 

 raw abraded human skin is known to have produced dangerous 

 symptoms of poisoning. The empyreumatic oil of Stramonium is said 

 to be poisonous to animals. ( Beck. ) 



Taylor says that the seeds of fruit scarcely ripe are not very bitter, 

 Children, therefore, eat them taking the fruit for some other fruit, not 

 knowing its poisonous nature.f The seeds retain their poisonous properties 

 notwithstanding exposure to heat. Mr. Lobo met with the case of a 

 child aged five who ate more than a drachm of the seeds slightly roasted. 

 In about an hour poisonous symptoms appeared. ( Taylor on Poisons, 

 p. 784, Ed. 1848 ). Dr. Chevers mentions a case of non-criminal poison- 

 ing fromthe leaves of Datura which is very remarkable. In March 1866, 



*Thi8 case is recorded by Dr. Barton and mentioned in Beck's Med. Jurisp,,~p.~910, 

 1836, London. 



I was once very nearly eating the fruit myself when barely five years old with my little 

 brother, aged three years. I took the Thorn-apple for custard apple. K, R. K. 



6 



