2 BULLETIN 405^ U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



into meal have been used botli for domestic animals and as food for 

 man. In Germany tlie land utilized for lupine, according to the 

 latest available statistics, - is 346,753.3 hectares; on 200,000 hectares 

 of this amount it is cultivated as a green manure. The poorer people 

 among the Greeks and Romans and the Cynic philosophers made 

 use of lupine meal in bread. The bitter principle was recognized not 

 only as disagreeable, but as injurious, and the seed was especially 

 prepared in order to get rid of this property. Among the Greeks the 

 seeds were cooked until soft, to remove the outer skin, then placed in 

 sacks in shallow places on the seashore to wash out the bitter prin- 

 ciple. Afterwards the seeds were dried, ground in a hand mill, and 

 baked into a poor bread. Only the poorest people used this meal 

 unmixed, but others mixed it with other kinds of meal, making a 

 more digestible flour. (Landerer, 1852.) Because the lupines were 

 planted in Maina and there used for food, the people in that region 

 were known as '^Lupinophagi." Lupine meal was also used by the 

 ancient Egyptians, and is still used in Andalusia, Corsica, and Pied- 

 mont. (Cornevin, 1893, p. 314.) In modern times lupine meal, after 

 a process of "Entbitterung," has been used to some extent as food 

 for animals. 



As a medicine, lupine seeds have been used since ancient times. 

 Pliny (ed. 1856, p. 452-453) enumerates 35 different uses. The 

 main uses, however, seem to have been as a cathartic and as a vermi- 

 fuge. For the latter it was used as an external apphcation as well 

 as internally. 



BeUini (1876) reports in detail cases of poisoning in man from 

 using a decoction of lupine as an enema. He states that Averrhoes 

 and Hofman pointed out the poisonous properties of the plants, and 

 that Paullus, 1708, reports a case of poisoning of a boy by an enema. 

 The reference to Averrhoes and Hofman could not be verified, as 

 apparently they only mentioned the plants as a vermifuge. The 

 symptoms mentioned by Bellini are dyspnoea, defective sight, dilated 

 pupils, and stupor. These symptoms, as will be seen later, compare 

 fairly well with those of poisoning by the lupine alkaloids. 



Isolated cases of poisonmg by lupines were noted as early as 1860, 

 but it was in 1872 and the following years that heavy losses of sheep 

 occurred in northern Germany. While there is evidence that some 

 animals are poisoned by the alkaloids, most of the cases, and prac- 

 tically all of the losses, have been from the use of lupine hay and are 

 caused, as will be seen later, by ictrogen. The occasional poisoning 

 of cattle and horses reported in Europe appears to have been from 

 the use of the seed and is alkaloidal poisoning. Sheep are also 

 poisoned in this way, but the great losses which have stimulated the 

 extensive investigation of the subject have been by ictrogenic poison- 

 ing of sheep. 



