543 
the attacks lasting five or six hours — in some of the cases being of 
great severity, and attended with much depression. The treatment, 
which was successful in every instance, consisted in encouraging free 
vomiting, and the administration of stimulants and anodynes. At 
the same time a series of similar cases occurred in TI.M.S. “ Aga- 
memnon,” and five other ships in the harbour. The only article of 
food which had been taken by all those who were affected was the 
milk used at breakfast, and to this the poisoning was evidently to be 
ascribed. On inquiry amongst Maltese of all classes the author found 
that there is a plant known in Malta by the name of Tenhuta which 
is eagerly eaten by the goats, from which animals almost all the milk 
used by the shipping is procured, and which communicates to their 
milk nauseous properties. This proved to be Euphorbia Par alias, 
the common sea spurge ; and its property of rendering the goat’s 
milk poisonous is so well known, that tbe goals, from which milk is 
to be got for supplying families and public institutions in Malta, are 
never allowed to feed at large where they can have access to the 
Euphorbia. It was stated to the author that the Maltese milkmen 
know perfectly well when a goat has eaten the Tenhuta from the 
appearance of the milk, which, if poured into the hollow of the hand 
and spread out by the finger, shows yellowish streaks through it. 
A somewhat puzzling circumstance was, that all the officers who 
partook of the milk did not suffer, and one gentleman escaped with- 
out any seizure who had drunk a whole bottle of milk. On the 
other hand, of the patients in the sick bay only one was seized, 
and this was a man who had procured some milk for himself from 
shore ; and one alarmingly severe case, which occurred in the “ Aga- 
memnon,” was in the person of a gentleman who had breakfasted 
entirely on milk. The author suggests, as an explanation of the 
immunity of some and the severe seizures of others of the con- 
sumers of the milk, that if the poisonous property reside in the 
above mentioned yellowish streaks, which seem readily separable 
from the bulk of the milk, the unequal distribution of the poisonous 
matter may account for the violent symptoms in one, the milder 
seizures in a second, and the total absence of all symptoms in a 
third. 
