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On the Poisonous Properties of Hemlock, and its Alkaloid Conia. 

 By Robert Christison, M. D., F. R. S. E., Professor of Ma- 

 teria Medica in the University of Edinburgh. 



(Read 7th December 1835.) 



Few poisons are of greater interest, in a historical or scienti- 

 fic point of view, than Hemlock. It has been known ever since 

 the most classic periods of antiquity, being generally believed to 

 have been the kumov of Nicander and Theophrastus, and com- 

 monly thought to have been the poison with which state-crimi- 

 nals were despatched in ancient Athens. Since that period it 

 has occupied a prominent place in all works on Toxicology ; and 

 it has been immemorially familiar as a deadly poison to the vul- 

 gar in every part of Europe, where there is scarcely a country or 

 even a province which does not produce it in abundance. For 

 nearly a century, too, since the writings of Baron Storck of Vi- 

 enna in 1762, it has been constantly in the hands of the physi- 

 cian as a remedy, and has been currently employed at different 

 times in the treatment of some of the most common, as well as in 

 some of the most malignant, of all the maladies to which the hu- 

 man body is liable. 



To its importance, as thus indicated, the attention which it 

 has received from scientific men, and more especially from the 

 chemist and the physiologist, has been by no means commensu- 

 rate. There is scarcely a chemical analysis of hemlock worth 

 mentioning till Giseke, in 1827, succeeded in concentrating its 

 active properties in a compound with sulphuric acid, of such en- 

 ergy, that two grains killed a small animal in fifty-five minutes ;* 



* Journal de Pharmacie, xiii. 266 ; or, Archiv des Apothekervereins in Nord- 

 lichen Deutschland, xx. 97. 



