2 BULLETIN 405, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
into meal have been used both for domestic animals and as food for 
man. In Germany the 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 application as well 
as internally. 
Bellini (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 dyspnea, 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 poisoning 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, 
