THE POISONOUS PLANTS OF BOMBAY. 169 



noiincing them good and pleasant to the taste ; presently, the servant 

 complained of giddiness and sickness, and while rendering assistance, 

 the master himself, with the mistress and five children, followed 

 in the train; $he sickness continuing for half an hour. " 



Another instance occurred last year in my own practice in the 

 Thana Jail. For years it was the pra'ctiqe in the ■ Thana #ail to 

 cook up the tender tops and leaves of the sweet potak^' (£a£ atas 

 edulis) and serve as vegetables to the jail inmates without -any . 

 deleterious effects. One night, last cold weather, I was .-suddenly 

 called by my Jail Hospital Assistant to attend to five or ". six cases 

 of almost epidemic vomiting and purging, in a more or less severe 

 form, among prisoners both male and female in the different barracks 

 of the jail. These five or six cases rose to fifty within. the next two 

 hours. If I had been hasty in my investigation • of -these cases, 

 I might have put down this sudden outburst of vomiting and purg- 

 ing to an epidemic of cholera. But there was no ^cholera in the 

 town, nor was it raging in the districts around, which supply our 

 jail with its daily fluctuating population. I made a careful ex- 

 amination of the vomits of the affected prisoners, and in those vomits 

 I found undigested portions of the sweet potato leaves, which- I 

 thought might be the probable cause of this almost epidemic suffer- 

 ing of the jail inmates, the jail population at the time being over 

 700 souls all told. To have to treat fifty prisoners within two hours 

 is decidedly a serious affair. Under prompt treatment, the details 

 of which need not be mentioned here, fortunately for all concerned, 

 there was no death. My next step was to obtain a sufficient quantity 

 of the leaves and tender tops of the sweet-potato plant, which I 

 submitted for analysis to my friend Mr. Stephenson, f.c.s., then of 

 Messrs. Kemp & Co. Mr. Stephenson discovered a glucoside in 

 the plant which I consider was the cause of the ailment. It is well 

 known that at certain times plants, which produce substantial roots or 

 tubers, are rich in glucosides in the sap of their leaves before they 

 finally store up all their starch in their roots and tubers. The gluco- 

 side discovered by Mr. Stephenson was probably not unlike that 

 found in the tubers of Jalap (Exogonium purga ) belonging to the 

 nat. ord„ Convolmlacece> of which the sweet-potato is no mean 

 member. 



