THE U 11 A It f, OR ARROW-POISON OF THE INDIANS. 
531 
the smallest bird. Even the wild cattle which roam over 
the savannahs of Pirara and Fort San Joaquim are secured in 
that way. Without that, the meat of the animals thus killed 
prove injurious to those who partake of it. On the contrary, 
the employment of urari in killing the animal renders the 
meat more tender ; and following the example of Father Zea, 
the missionary who accompanied Humboldt up the Orinoco, 
we killed, during the Guiana expedition, the fowls which we 
purchased from the Indians, and which usually were un- 
commonly tough, by means of a poisoned arrow* rendering 
thereby the flesh more tender. 
1 must not omit to mention the experiments made by 
Mr. Sewell, who, viewing the lock-jaw in horses as the result 
of irritation, conjectured that if a horse in tetanus were 
poisoned by urari, which acts by suppressing nervous power, 
and life was then to be restored by artificial respiration, the 
nervous system, on reanimation taking place, might possibly 
be free of the original morbid irritation. Reasoning thus, 
Mr. Sewell tried the following experiment : 44 A horse 
suffering from tetanus and lock-jaw, the mouth being too 
firmly closed to admit the introduction of either food or 
medicine, was inoculated on the fleshy part of the shoulder 
with an arrow-point coated with urari poison. In ten minutes 
apparent death was produced. Artificial respiration was 
immediately commenced, and kept up for four hours, when 
reanimation took place ; the animal rose up, apparently per- 
fectly recovered, and eagerly partook of hay and corn. He 
unluckily was too abundantly supplied with food during the 
night. The consequence was over distention of stomach, of 
which the animal died the following day, without, however, 
having the slightest recurrence of tetanic symptoms. 5 * 
Mr. Waterton conjectured that the application of urari 
poison might prove successful in cases of hydrophobia. 
However, the experiments of recovering animals which had 
been killed with uraii by tracheotomy, have not always 
succeeded ; indeed, only in the smaller number of cases. 
It is therefore evident that the urari, in the present state 
of our knowledge of its effects, could only be resorted to in 
the greatest extremity as a remedy against hydrophobia, and 
under all circumstances, only where there is no other hope of 
recovery. 
It becomes, however, now a question of the greatest 
importance to society, should that dangerous poison be 
employed for criminal purposes, how is it to be discovered 
that such was employed? The wound by which good urari 
is communicated to the blood shows no inflammation ; nor is 
