234 MALAY POISONS AND CHARM CURES 



stomach and intestines. Professional jugglers, who take 

 care to chew the glass well before they swallow it, do not 

 appear to suffer any ill effects. Experiments conducted 

 in 1918 by Simmons and von Glahn on animals who were 

 given gi-onnd-up glass graded from *' large broken to fine 

 powdered " suffered no ill effects, and the microscopical 

 examination of the alimentary canal and viscera showed 

 no lesions after the animals had been killed. The 

 administration of po^vdered glass caused gastro-enteritis 

 in a case reported from India. Intense burning pain in 

 the stomach, with persistent vomiting of blood in small 

 quantities, but wathout nausea or pain in the tliroat, 

 came on eight hours after a breakfast in which it had 

 been concealed (Ref. 4). Crushed glass used in this way 

 in the West Indies as a poison is stated to be generally a 

 failure. The fatal dose is not known. 



Methods employed by Malays with Pounded 

 Glass as a Poison. — Pounded glass, or sirbok fcoc/fa, 

 is generally mixed with the short, fine hairs of certain 

 kinds of bamboo : these hairs are kno\NTa as miang 

 rehong ; the mixture is put into some kind of food such 

 as boiled rice. In 1918 a Malay gii*l came to the State 

 hospital, Kelantan, with a dirty scrap of newspaper 

 containing bamboo hairs and pounded glass. She 

 required an opinion, as another Kelantan woman, her 

 fellow- wife, had recommended it as a reliable medicine 

 for a cold in the head. Sometimes the scrapings from 

 the dried bark of a jungle vine called rotan sega (Cala- 

 mus, sp., PalniEE) are combined w^th the glass instead 

 of the fine bamboo hairs; the combination is said to 

 cause blood-spitting. The tiny bits of dried rattan 

 bark can be recognised under the microscope with 

 a low power as oblong or square, sharply cut 

 siliceous cells with small fragments showing stomata 

 (Ref. 2). 



