524 SCIENTIFIC AND LITKRAKY NOTES. 



not recognise the symptoms of any one poison in particular. I found that the 

 lady had dined about two hours and a half previously to the attack, and that 

 she had eaten part of one of these Canadian partridges. The birds were per- 

 fectly fresh, having been packed in ice. Five days after this occurrence I was 

 sent for hurriedly to see a younger lady, the wife of a gentleman who had had 

 a case of partridges sent him from Canada, and who had presented a brace of 

 them to my first patient. I found this lady cold and pulseless, and feeling par- 

 alyzed, with ' a peculiarly horrid thrilling sensation all over her,' and a very 

 painful sense of constriction in her throat. She had eaten for supper heartily of 

 one of these Canadian partridges, and within a few minutes felt ill as I have 

 described. I gave her mustard emetics, and afterwards brandy in large quanti- 

 ties ; and gradually, after many hours of intense suffering, the lady recovered, 

 aud in a few days regained her usual good health. On the night of her extreme 

 illness, while sitting in the bedroom, I noticed a young cat there, which, ia 

 attempting to move, fell over on its side, and upon lifting it up I found the 

 hinder legs paralysed, so as to be quite useless ; and upon the poor thing attempt- 

 ing to walk or leap, it fell helplessly on its side again. The lady told me that 

 during supper she had thrown to this cat some bits of the patridge. It was 

 found that the poor thing had been thoroughly sick. The cat continued to be 

 paralysed, but gradually recovered in a few days, no doubt saved by the natural 

 act of vomiting. My impression is, that the younger lady might have recovered 

 without help ; but she was, I am certain, very materially benefitted by induced 

 sickness and by large doses of brandy. The elder lady, I feel sure, would hava 

 died unless prompt and continued strong measures had been taken to keep the 

 flickering and almost exhausted flame of life burning." 



It has long been known that the poisonous principles of certain plants retaia 

 their properties after having passed through the digestive laboratory and become 

 incorporated in the tissues or secretions Modern chemistry, by showing that 

 the vegetable alkaloids pass through the animal body undecomposed, and may 

 be detected under favourable circumstances, has only confirmed a very common 

 observation. The flesh of hares which have browsed on the Rhododendron 

 chrysanthemum, and that of young pheasants after feeding on the buds and 

 shoots of the Kahnia latifolia, acquire deleterious properties. So also the milk 

 and flesh of cattle grazing on some of the mountain herbage of South America 

 have been found poisonous. Some time ago several persons near Toulouse were 

 poisoned by a dish of snails, which had been fattened on the leaves and shoots 

 of Coriaria myrtifolia. In all these instances the vegetable principles seem to 

 be incapable of affecting the animals themselves. The poisonous effects of honey 

 obtained by bees from certain species of Kalmia, Azalea, and Rhododendron, are 

 also well known. It is said that the plague mentioned by Xenophon, from which 

 the 10,000 Greeks suffered in their retreat, was produced by eating honey col- 

 lected from the Azalea Pontica — the " CEgolethron" of the ancients. The effects 

 produced by such honey are of a narcotico-irritant character, and in some in- 

 stances have been of long duration. Even the mead made from it is highly 

 poisonous. — Mtd. Times and Gazette, 



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