ACONITUM FEROX 
105 
species are cooked and eaten. It is still more strange to find that while in 
certain districts of Northern India the roots are collected as a poison, there 
are others in which the same roots are eaten as “ a pleasant tonie (i). ” 
Flückiger and Hanbury, Phavmacographia, Lond., 1874, p. 8. 
Bish is inentioned hy the Persian physician Alhervi (2), in the lOth century 
as well as by Avicenna (3) and inany other Arabian writers on medicine. 
Upon the extinction of the Arabian school of medicine this virulent drug 
seem.s to hâve fallen into oblivion, It is just named by Acosta (1578) as one 
of the ingrédients of a pill which the Brahmin physicians give in fever and 
dysentery There is also a very strange référencé to it as “■ Bisch" in the 
Persian Pharmacopœia of Father Ange, where it is stated (5) that the root 
though most poisonons whenfresh, is perfectly innocuons when dried, and 
that it is imported into Persia from India, and mixed wlth food and condi- 
ments as a restorative ! 
Idem. 
L’aconit (napel) transplanté d’nn lieu en un antre, par exemple des Alpes 
dans les jardins, perd sa qualité vénéneuse. 
Voy. Geoffroy, Matière médicale, t. I, section II, pag-e 121 (1750). 
Aux étranges propriétés des diverses espèces d’aconits, ajoutez : 
« L’aconite chasse le venin hors du corps, mais s’il n’y en a point, il 
empoisonne. » 
Laurent Joubert, Erreurs popuL, 1000, p. 135. 
3. — FOLKLORE. 
Pour la légende orientale de la belle jeune fille habituée dès son enfance 
à absorber ce poison, devenant venimeuse pour celui qui la touche ou la 
regarde et envoyée à certains ennemis de haut rang pour les faire périr 
sans qu’ils soient sur leurs gardes, voyez : W. Hertz, Safje vom Giflniüdchen 
(dans AhhandluiKjen d. k. bai/er. Akad. d. Wiss. Kl. I. AX Bd. I), 1803, 
p. 101-10^, I3G-130, iit)-151. L’auteur de ce curieux travail doune des 
ilétails sur les vertus toxiiiues des acnnits, p. 13()-13ü. 
(1) Munro , ([uoted Ity Ilooker and Tliomsoii , For. Ind. i. (1855) 58. 2iid part. 
(■.1) Abu Mansur Monafik ben Ali .Vlberui , Liber Fundameniorum Pharmacologix, 
i. (1830; i". Seligmann’s édition. 
(3) Valgrisi édition, 1501. lib. ii. tract. 2. it. N.*(p. 347). 
(i) Clusius , Exotica, 288. 
{•') Pharm. Persica, 1081. j). 358, also 17 and 310. 
