DR THOMAS R. FRASER ON STROPHANTHUS HISPIDUS. 957 



and other similar cardiac poisons, but with greater activity. The heart's beats were quickly 

 arrested, with the ventricle in systole and with the auricles distended. This effect is 

 attributed by him to an action on the nerve structures of the heart. He also states that 

 his experiments were confirmed by Vulpian. Pelikan obtained the seeds from the 

 Colonial Exhibition held in Paris in 1865, to which they had been sent by M. Griffon 

 du Bellay, a surgeon in the French Naval Service, who had obtained them in the Gaboon 

 district of West Africa, where they are used by an elephant-hunting tribe (Pahouins) to 

 poison their small bamboo arrows. 



In 1869, a few specimens of ripe follicles were presented to the Materia Medica 

 Museum of the University of Edinburgh by the Rev. Horace Waller, who had been a 

 member of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities Mission of 1861-64, superintended 

 by the late Bishop Mackenzie, with whom had been associated, during the operations 

 of the mission between the River Shire and Lake Shirwa, the famous traveller Living- 

 stone and the enterprising botanist Kirk. The follicles were sent with the information 

 that the seeds contained in them constituted the Kombe arrow-poison of South-Eastern 

 Africa. Mr Waller informs me that, at his suggestion, they had been brought to this 

 country by Mr E. D. Young, R.N., when he went to Africa in 1867, to clear up the 

 story of Livingstone's murder. Sir Robert Christison placed these follicles at my 

 disposal for examination, and as in the course of time the insufficient material which 

 they afforded was supplemented by some additional follicles sent to me by Professor 

 Sharpey and, afterwards, by Mr John Buchanan, I was enabled to determine the most 

 important facts in the pharmacological action, as well as in the chemistry of the substance, 

 some of which were communicated to this Society in February 1870, in the form of a 

 preliminary notice, and published in the Proceedings of that year, # and also, with a few 

 amplifications, in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology of 1872-t While the investi- 

 gation was in progress, Sir Douglas Maclagan received from Sir John Kirk a poisoned 

 arrow, obtained from the same district of Africa as the follicles ; and with this arrow I 

 was enabled to determine that the poison possesses the same action as the seeds contained 

 in the follicles, and thus to confirm the discovery already made by Kirk of the source of 

 the arrow-poison. J 



My experiments were made on cold-blooded animals and on birds and mammals ; and 

 the administration was effected by subcutaneous injection, and by introduction into the 



* Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. vii., 1869-70, pp. 99-103. 



t Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. vii., 1872, pp. 140-1 55. 



J In a recently written letter (31st Oct. 1888) Sir John Kirk thus graphically describes the discovery he had made 

 in 1861 of the plant from which the Kombe poison is obtained : — " The source of the poison, namely, Strophantus 

 Kombe', was first identified by me. I had long sought for it, but the natives invariably gave me some false plant, until 

 one day at Chibisa's village, on the river Shire, I saw the ' Kombe,' then new to me as an East African plant (I had 

 known an allied, or perhaps identical, species at Sierra Leone (1858), where it is used as a poison). There climbing on 

 a tall tree it was in pod, and I could get no one to go up and pick specimens. On mounting the tree myself to reach 

 the Kombe pods, the natives, afraid that I might poison myself if I handled the plant roughly or got the juice in a cut 

 or in my mouth, warned me to be careful, and admitted that this was the ' Kombe ' or poison plant. In this way the 

 poison was identified, and I brought specimens home to Kew, where they were described." 



