IX.—Description of the Plant which produces the Ordeal Bean of Calabar. By Joun 
Hutton Batrour, A.M., M.D., F.R.SS. L. & E., Professor of Medicine and 
Botany in the University of Edinburgh. (With two Plates, XVI. and XVII.) 
(Read 16th January 1860.) 
It has been long known that in various parts of Africa, the natives are in the 
habit of subjecting to the ordeal of poison parties who are suspected of crimes. 
On the east coast, we meet with Tanghinia venenata, yielding the Tanghin poison- 
nut of Madagascar; and on the west coast, seeds and barks of different kinds have 
been employed as ordeals,—the sources of which, however, have not been hitherto 
fully ascertained. 
Dr Kirk, naturalist to the Livingstone Expedition, states, that the Manganja 
tribe, in the south-east of Africa, believe in a God, and in medicine, or the ordeal 
which he directs as the means of discovering crime. If the ordeal causes vomit- 
ing, it shows innocence; if it acts by the bowels, crime, and the person is put to 
death. But the doctors have a good knowledge of which to give, for there are 
different plants used. 
In the district of Old Calabar a bean is used for an ordeal poison, to which 
the name of Esére is given. It possesses extraordinary energy, and the attention 
of the missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in that quarter 
was directed to this poison several years ago. The Rev. H. M. WappeE Lt, one of 
these missionaries (now in Edinburgh), brought some of the beans to this country ; 
and of late, numerous specimens of them have been sent or brought to Edinburgh 
by other missionaries. As they possessed considerable interest in a toxicological 
point of view, they naturally attracted the attention of medical jurists. 
The effects and mode of action of the ordeal bean were examined in 1855 by 
Dr Caristison (Edinburgh Monthly Journal of Medical Science, March 1855). The 
information obtained by him as to its effects on the negroes in Africa from 
observers there, merely went to show that the bean did not cause any serious 
injury if it was vomited not long after being taken; but that, if retained, it in- 
variably caused death, sometimes within an hour, and apparently occasioning 
insensibility and slight convulsions. On careful inquiry, however, he found that 
the real phenomena, and the kind of action exerted on the body, are quite 
different. 
From an incidental observation made on himself, in consequence of an over- 
dose having been accidentally swallowed, it appears that the ordeal bean causes 
giddiness, a sense of not unpleasant weariness and heaviness in the limbs, then 
great languor and tumultuous irregularity of the pulse and heart, extreme weak- 
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