8 BULLETIN 69, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
In Siberia the crushed nut is used for syphilitic symptoms, and in 
Norway for gout, while the seeds have been used as a diuretic.’ 
In the nineteenth edition of Wood and Bache’s Dispensatory of 
the United States, p. 1449, are the following statements: ‘‘At present 
the plant (Cicuta virosa) is never used = and rarely ex- 
ternally as an anodyne poultice in local pains.’ 
“Cicuta (maculata) has been highly lauded as a specific in nervous 
and sick headache, but is rarely, if ever, used.” (Stearns, 1858, 
p. 253.) | 
Dragendorff, 1898, p. 487, states that in Oregon Cicuta is used 
aS al arrow poison. 
-Cicuta has sometimes been used for committing suicide, although 
it is probable that the statement which is made by some writers to 
the effect that it was kept by the people of Marseilles for this pur- 
pose is inaccurate, as it is more likely that Conium was used. 
Rafinesque, 1828, page 110, says “The Indians when tired of life 
are said to poison themselves with the roots of this plant.” 
Caillard, 1829, tells of a laborer who purchased and ate the root 
for suicidal purposes, but recovered after being given an emetic. 
Trojanowsky, 1874, relates how a laborer, after a drunken spree 
and a domestic quarrel, left home and was the next day found dead, 
the cause of death being Cicuta. The evidence was considered 
sufficient to prove that he ate the root of Cicuta virosa with the 
deliberate purpose of committing suicide. 
Trojanowsky refers aiso to another case, the ‘ Kobeilla’sche Proc- 
ess,’ but it has been impossible to verify this, as the reference in 
Trojanowsky’s paper is evidently wrong. 
Piibram, 1900, tells of an interesting case. A woman having 
suffered considerable domestic infelicity, on her way to arrange for 
a divorce called on a fortune teller to find out whether she would 
succeed in the separation. The fortune teller told her that the sepa- 
ration was unnecessary, as her husband would not live more than 
one year and advised her to measure the shadow of her husband with 
a stick, throw the stick upon a stream, saying “‘I lay down not this 
stick but thy life, and as the stick beccmes broken in its passage, so 
shall thy life be cut off.” Upon the woman replying that she did 
not wish‘her husband to die, the fortune teller went to a swamp and 
gathered three roots, ;alling them “neapte de boalta,” and told her 
to make a mash of two of these roots, two potatoes, some corn meal, 
sheep cheese, and onions, and bake a cake of it for her husband to eat. 
After eating this root, her husband would go about for three months 
in a stunned condition and would not abuse her or compel her to 
live with him. If her husband after eating the cake should become 
ill, the fortune teller would give her tea, so that he should nct die. 
1 Brandt, Phoebus, and Ratzeburg, 1838, p. 111. 
