530 THE URARI, OH AltROW-POISON OF THE INDIANS. 
but in other points it differed from it, for the curare did not 
produce an inflammation of the wound, which, if caused by 
snake-poison, produces, almost instantaneously, considerable 
inflammation. 
His statement that the curare may be taken inwardly, or 
received in the stomach without danger, has hitherto been 
the adopted opinion. I have mentioned already, in the 
‘ Annals of Natural History, 5 that while suffering under a 
tertian ague, during my first expedition in the interior of 
Guiana, and our quinine having fallen short, I took the 
urari poison in small doses inwardly. Humboldt relates that 
the Indians considered it an excellent stomachic, but as I 
found that it did not remove my fever, and my friend and 
travelling companion, the late Captain Raining, having 
warned me repeatedly against this practice, I desisted. 
Some years afterwards my brother, Otto Schomburgk, 
made at Berlin several experiments with the urari poison. 
Amongst others was the following: He administered to two 
cats the urari in like quantities ; to the first by incision, to 
the other inwardly by the mouth ; to the third he applied by 
incision a like quantity of strychnia. The convulsions caused 
by having placed the urari to the incised wound stood not in 
comparison to the tetanus and trismus produced by the 
strychnia. The former exhibited much more a gradually 
falling asleep than violent convulsive affections. 
The cat, in the wound of which urari poison had been 
introduced, died after eleven minutes ; the other, poisoned by 
strychnia, after twelve minutes ; and the one to which 
the poison had been administered inwardly, in seventeen 
minutes. 
The death of the latter took place under the same symptoms 
as produced by bringing the poison in contact with the blood. 
On dissecting the animal, the stomach and the duodenum 
were found in their whole extent coloured with the poison. 
He could not discover a wound in either of the organs con- 
ducting to the stomach, or in that part itself. 
In order to substantiate the result, which my brother 
obtained by giving the poison inwardly, it requires numerous 
repetitions. 
The cat may have had some excoriation, if not exactly a 
wound, by which the blood came in contact with the poison. 
It is, however, sufficient to caution against the internal use 
of urari in its concentrated state. But it is w ell known that 
with such poison, more or less weakened, the Indians mostly 
kill their game* This refers to the thick-skinned tapir, to 
the fleet deer, the agile monkey, as w r ell as to the largest or 
