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The Pharmacological Action of South African Boxwood 
(Gonioma kamassi). 
By W. E. Drxon. 
(Communicated by Prof. J. N. Langley, F.R.S. Received November 1, 1910,— 
Read January 19, 1911.) 
(From the Pharmacological Laboratory, Cambridge.) 
The boxwood products with which the following experiments were 
performed were prepared from the wood of Gonioma kamassi exported from 
Knysna and belonging to the N.O. Apocynaceee. The wood was carefully 
identified and sent in sealed parcel to Mr, E. F. Harrison, who extracted an 
alkaloid. The certain identity of the wood is of some importance, as the 
preparations which were used in my experiments cannot be called into 
question and as there has been some confusion in the past between Gonioma 
kamasst (South African box), Bucus macowant (East London boxwood) and 
Sarcocephalus diderrichui (West African boxwood). 
The action of South African boxwood has assumed an economic importance 
in recent years, since it has on occasion and in limited amount been 
substituted for Persian and other boxwoods in the manufacture of shuttles in 
Lancashire, and it is alleged that symptoms of poisoning have arisen in a 
percentage of the workmen employed in sawing this wood or in finishing the 
chiselled shuttles. The symptoms complained of seem to vary a good deal in 
different individuals, but respiratory trouble, sometimes of a nature simulating 
spasmodic asthma, headaches, cerebral depression, and nasal catarrh appear to 
be the most frequent. 
Harvey Gibson* extracted from an African boxwood—probably G. kamassi 
though the wood was not definitely identified—0-07 per cent. of an impure 
alkaloid; with this he performed some perfusion experiments on the isolated 
mammalian heart ; from these he concludes that the alkaloid is a cardiac poison. 
However valuable experiments on isolated organs may be in conjunction 
with other experiments, taken alone they teach little. The known action of a 
number of substances on isolated muscle or heart gives no indication of their 
relative toxicity to the normal intact animal. And although it is easy enough 
to poison an isolated perfused heart with boxwood, as it is with almost any 
chemical substance, yet it is not possible to depress seriously the heart in an 
intact animal, since before the heart is even appreciably affected! respiration 
* ‘Biochemical Journ.,’ 1906, vol. 1, p. 39. 
