106 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY. SOCIETY, Vol. X. 



fumes of the nut while roasting. Hei- face was so swollen that not 

 a feature was discernible for several days. A similar case occurred 

 in a boy, who cut open one of the nuts, eating a small portion raw, 

 and by handling it, spread the juice over the different parts of the 

 body. " The tongue, face, neck, hands, forearms, &c., were enormously 

 swollen, red and very painful." In this very able thesis which 

 Mrs. Brigham presented to the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in 

 1878, she further states how she and her husband, both ignorant of the 

 poisonous quality of the nut-shell, suffered very seriously from skin 

 eruption while incautiously attempting to break the shell with their 

 teeth. While attempting to extract the vesicating principles, Mrs. 

 Brigham, in spite of the elaborate precautions of encasing her hands 

 with rubber and of using instruments, suffered from vesication of her 

 right cheek, whereon a small particle of the juice found its way. The 

 result was that instantly a slight burning was felt. " As quickly as 

 possible," she says, " the poison was washed away with water, and to 

 prevent. any minute pariicle from adhering, again washed with ether." 

 But the mischief was done, and she suffered. It is hardly necessary 

 for me to enter here fully into the details of what the fair experimenter 

 had to pass through for the next eleven days and more. Suffice it to 

 say that vesication was the result. The face was so disfigured *' as 

 to be unrecognizable to the most intimate friends." Hands, fingers 

 included, suffered from a vesicular eruption attended with oedema ; 

 other parts of the body suffered in their wake. Mrs. Brigham closes 

 her very interesting thesis with the warning words of science. These 

 words will not suffer, 1 am sure, in being reproduced here as the 

 guiding voice of bitter and painful personal experience. " Several 

 authors," says she, " speak of its use (meaning the use of the oleo- 

 resin — K.R.K.) for the removal of warts, corns and callosities, and some 

 as a vesicant instead of cantharides. Considering the almost infini- 

 tesimal quantity of the poison which could have been absorbed in my 

 personal attack and the gravity of the results, it would seem, in my 

 judgment, to be unwarranted to apply a remedy so uncontrollable in 

 cases where many other standard remedies might be used, which are 

 not open to such objection." I am not disposed to underrate the value 

 of this painful personal narrative, but it appears that these graphically 

 described sufferings of both the husband and wife are singular in the 



