355 
And its Effects Tested. 
quite liaid. these pots were tightly closed with palm leaves or small 
pieces of animal skin. The Urari was ready on the third day, when the 
contented manufacturer tried its strength in my presence, for which 
object he had caught several large lizards. He dipped the tip of 
a needle that he had received from me into the black syrupy mass, let the 
poison hanging on to it dry, stuck one of the lizards in a toe of the 
hind leg and let it run: in the course of nine minutes the peculiar 
appearances of the poisoning set in, and a minute later the lightly 
wounded creature was dead. A second and a third were stuck in the 
tail, where it gave practical proof of its efficacy within the same period. 
He had purposely chosen the lizards for experiment, because he main- 
tained that the effects were apparent half as quick again with warm- 
blooded animals than with amphibians. A rat which a boy caught also 
confirmed the statement for it was dead in four minutes, a fowl that I 
had intended for my lunch already in three. Each of the latter animals 
was only almost imperceptibly wounded. 
960. The old man assured me that the poison, if good and especially 
if kept dry, maintained its deadly effective strength for years When it 
loses its strength, they restore it by means of a little juice of the poison- 
cassava root ( Manihot utilissima ) . After pouring some of it into the 
poison, calabash, they bury the latter, well covered, in the ground, and 
leave it there a day and a half: by that time the juice has mixed with 
the poison, the strength of which is said to be revived thereby. 
961. That the poison after such an interval does in e act require a 
longer time to take effect, I have learnt by experience with poison made 
in my presence, because T brought it with me to Berlin and several times 
made experiments with it when from 15 to 20 minutes, according to the 
creature’s tenacity of life, would often elapse before death took place. 
Unfortunately, one has not yet succeeded in obtaining a completely 
exhaustive analysis of the poison although the universally renowned 
chemist, Dr. Heintz of Berlin, has been a long time engaged on it,* 
* Dr Heintz has kindly allowed me to publish his results so far obtained, for which I am 
all the more indebted because they constitute at all events the first, to a certain extent at 
least, detailed analysis of the much discussed poison: — 
“Herewith, as requested, please find the certainly still incomplete results of my re- 
searches on the Urari poison received from you. The few prominent properties of its 
essential ingredient, especially its inability to crystallise either alone or in conjunction with 
other substances, stand in the way of its more accurate investigation and above every- 
thing else in obtaining it in a pure condition. 
“In investigating this substance, it seemed to me above all important to prove the 
absence of strychnine which, for the rest, might have been expected owing to its being 
derived from a species of Strychnos, although judging from the nature and manner of its 
effects on the organism, it bears absolutely no resemblance whatever to it. With this 
end in view I boiled the watery solution of the substance with magnesia, filtered the 
precipitate, and after washing, boiled it with alcohol. This took up but an extremely small 
quantity of some extract-like stuff and on evaporation left no trace of strychnine. 
“ 1 accordingly tried, on the method laid down by von Boussingault (Annales de Chim. 
et de Phys. 38, 24), to obtain the soluble salty base discovered by him in the poison. The 
portion of the Urari dissolved in alcohol and water was treated according to his directions 
with tincture of gall, whereby the poisonous material was precipitated in conjunction with 
tannin. He dissolved this precipitate in oxalic acid and boiled the solution with magnesia 
so as to separate both the oxalic acid as well as the tannin. He filtered off the watery so- 
lution, evaporated it, and extracted the poisonous material with alcohol whereupon some 
insoluble magnesia-salt was left behind. 
