926 SIR THOMAS R. FKASER ON THE 



From the evidence of these experiments the conclusion may be drawn that the 

 poison of the Government of India arrows consists chiefly, if not entirely, of the 

 ground seeds of a croton plant, probably Croton Tiglium, with which various inert 

 substances are mixed for the purpose of increasing the adhesion of the poison to the 

 arrow-head and shaft.* 



D. General Observations and Results, with Summary. 



The experiments have shown that in warm-blooded animals the croton arrow- 

 poison restricts its effects to the parts witli which it is brought into contact, where 

 it produces a strictly localised inflammation, and, if the quantity be large, suppuration 

 and even necrosis. 



It may be inferred that a similar strictly localised effect is produced in man. 

 Arrows thus poisoned cannot be regarded as lethal weapons because of the poison 

 they diffuse throughout the body. Their strictly local effects could successfully be 

 dealt with by the surgeon, in the same way as any other localised inflammation. If, 

 however, they be not so dealt with, as would happen among barbarous tribes, it is 

 not unlikely that general septicaemia would occur. In contrast with a poison which is 

 quickly absorbed into the blood, such as aconite, death would not occur until long after 

 the insertion of a croton arrow into the body, and the Abors themselves state that 

 this period may be so long as six weeks. f At the same time, the above experiments 

 do not support the suggestion that there is any special septic virus in this poison. 

 In our modern conception, the arrows, no doubt, are far from being surgically clean, 

 but they are no more unclean than the arrows poisoned with aconite, and no 

 irritative effects, in the least degree comparable with those produced by croton, were 

 caused either by small or large administrations of the aconite-poisoned arrows. 



As to the lethality in man of the aconite-poisoned arrows, it was found that the 

 poison removed from several of them had rather less than an average weight of one 

 gramme. Of the warm-blooded animals used in these experiments, it may be assumed 

 that the rat would have a resisting power nearer to man than that of any of the 

 other animals. Accordingly, as the minimum lethal dose for the rat is with Colonel 

 Bailey's a now-poison 0"005 grm. per kilo, one arrow would be a little more 

 than sufficient to kill three men of ten stone weight each ; as with Sir Wyvillk 

 Thomson's arrows the minimum lethal dose is 0'025 grm. per kilo, one arrow 

 would be insufficient to kill one man ; as with Surgeon-General Sir Arthur 

 Sloggett's aiiows the minimum lethal dose is 0'075 grm. per kilo, one arrow would 

 be sufficient to kill only the fifth part of a man; and as with Captain Macdonald's 

 anows the minimum lethal dose is ()"l grm., one arrow could kill only the sixth part 



* While this paper was passing through the press, I received l>y the courtesy of Professor Cash, of Aberdeen, a 

 paper recently published by himself and Walter J. Dilling, on the oil and .seeds of Croton Elliotianus, in which many 

 resemblances in action are shown to exist between this croton and C. Tiglium. 



t Letter from Major Davidson, I. M.S., lGth October li)12. 



