June 27, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



1025 



The interest in connection with poison- 

 ous honey is both theoretical and practical ; 

 that with poisonous game is, perhaps, only- 

 theoretical, since no cases have been called 

 to public attention for many years and the 

 records of past eases are few in number. 

 To determine whether the flesh of a bird 

 or animal that has eaten a poisonous plant 

 is poisonous or not it is necessary to prove : 

 first, that the birds or animals in question 

 may eat the suspected plants with impunity 

 to such an extent as to render their flesh 

 poisonous; and secondly, that, perhaps 

 under stress, they actually do so. This 

 latter point can be solved only by the close 

 study of actual cases. An attempt was 

 made by the. writer a few years ago to ex- 

 amine into the former question, especially 

 in connection with some historic cases of 

 poisoning, supposed to have been due to 

 eating partridges which had fed on moun- 

 tain laurel, Kalmia latifolia. It is true that 

 partridges eat laurel leaves in winter, and 

 that they may not be poisoned thereby. I 

 have seen as much as 14 grams of the leaves 

 taken from the crop of a single partridge, 

 yet this bird was eaten without any ill ef- 

 fect arising therefrom. In this case, how- 

 ever, the leaves were still in large pieces 

 many of them being over a half inch 

 square. The andromedotoxin was, there- 

 fore, not extracted, and, uiiless the bird's 

 previous meal consisted of the same food, 

 its flesh could not have contained much of 

 the poison. Andromedotoxin was fed for 

 several days in gradually increasing doses 

 to a chicken, which, at the end of the fourth 

 day, had received a very large dose without 

 afllecting it at all seriously. The chicken 

 was then killed, cleared of entrails, boiled 

 for a half hour and fed to a cat with the 

 result that it was very badly, but not 

 fatally, poisoned. Similar problems might 

 be suggested in connection with the poison- 

 ous plants eaten by game animals, and es- 

 pecially in connection with the edibility of 

 fish caught for food by the use of plants 



thrown into the water to stupefy and poison 

 them. Some detective work, also, is de- 

 sirable to determine to what extent poison- 

 ous plants are clandestinely added to 

 whiskey and other alcoholic beverages to 

 increase their intoxicating effect. It is re- 

 ported that in some country districts 

 throughout the South use is thus made of 

 the leaves of mountain laurel and other 

 andromedotoxin-containing plants. 



The practices above mentioned suggest 

 another subdivision of my paper, and that 

 is the effects of the habitual use of nar- 

 cotic plants. In the United States this use 

 is confined mainly to tobacco smokers, but 

 it is interesting to note that the use of In- 

 dian hemp is spreading throughout the 

 Southwest, where it was most probably in- 

 troduced from Mexico. The effect of this 

 drug is well known from accounts pub- 

 lished in the daily press and elsewhere. 

 The common Mexican name of the plant 

 in ' mariguana,' but this name is also ap- 

 plied in some parts of Mexico to a native 

 Datura, D. meteloides, much like our com- 

 mon jimson weed. Both of these plants 

 and others, such as the tree tobacco, Nico- 

 tina glauca, are sometimes called loco- 

 weeds in Mexico. 'Loco' is a Spanish 

 word which, in its original sense, means 

 mad or craay. Of late, however, it has 

 been extensively applied, especially in 

 northern Mexico and the United States, 

 to certain plants which so affect the brain 

 of animals that eat them as to cause 

 chronic derangements of the power of 

 thinking and of coordinating movement. 

 It is, however, most popularly applied to 

 several -weeds— Astragalus and Aragallus 

 spp. — of the bean family, which cause a 

 peculiar kind of insanity in animals that 

 eat them. It is not uncommonly asserted 

 by Mexicans that sometimes a single dose 

 of hemp will cause long-lasting insanity. 

 Van Hasselt, a Dutch authority on poison- 

 ous plants, also asserts that a single dose 

 of this drug may cause mania for months. 



