16 BULLETIN 824, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



the Chemist and Druggist (16). In the only fatal case the patient, 

 a little girl, 2 years old, had eaten about half an ounce of the powder. 



Certain species of Chrysanthemum are used as medicine in various 

 countries. Eastes (74) states that C. parthenium is official in the 

 French Codex, and is reputed to have tonic, stimulative, sudorific, 

 diuretic, antipyretic, emenagogic, and anthehninthic properties. 

 According to Henry (127) many chrysanthemums are used as medi- 

 cine in China. A case of poisoning with C. indicum is described by 

 Hoffmann (135). In the report of Remington (215) on the Centen- 

 nial Exhibition, the flowers of Chrysanthemum album andjiavum are 

 said to be used in China for flatulency, and Pyrethrum parthenium 

 is included in a list of drugs from Chile, although its use is not given. 

 Stearns (266) lists Chrysanthemum leucanthemum and Pyrethrum 

 parthenium as plants whose flowers were used in medicine by the 

 natives of Michigan in the fifties. Sato (236) speaks of insect powder 

 (made from flowers of C. cinerarisefolium) being used in medicine, 

 as weU as for insecticidal purposes. 



In regard to the effect of insect powder upon mammals other than 

 man, Riley (225) cites a case in which the powder was copiously 

 rubbed on a dog, as a result of which the animal became sick, being 

 affected in the locomotive organs very much as insects are. Car- 

 ruthers (45) states that Pyrethrum inodorum is credited with producing 

 lasting injury to the digestive organs of stock by damaging the lining 

 of the stomach, and causing death when eaten in large quantities. 

 Coquillet (55) reports that horses fed upon the dried stems of the 

 Pyrethrum cinerarisefolium plant appeared to relish it very much, 

 and were not injured in the least by it. In 1880 Sayre (240) per- 

 formed experiments showing the toxic action of insect powder made 

 from the flowers of Pyrethrum roseum upon tadpoles. Fujitani (89) 

 and Reeb (214) record experiments made upon frogs, fish, dogs, and 

 other animals with what they regarded as the active principle of 

 Pyrethrum flowers. These tests, however, were made with extracts 

 of the flowers and after certain chemical treatment, so that the 

 results obtained are not strictly comparable with the action of in- 

 sect powder itself. 



ADULTERATION OF INSECT POWDER. 



Insect powder appears to have been extensively adulterated from 

 the time it first entered into commerce. The fact that its nature 

 remained unknown until 1818, when Sumttoff discovered that it 

 was made by pulverizing the flower heads of certain species of 

 Pyrethrum, and the fact that the active insecticidal constituent has 

 not been definitely determined up to the present, rendered the fixing 

 of an exact standard difficult. Sophistication has been correspond- 

 ingly easy. 



