STRYCHNOS NUX-VOMICA -POISON-NUT. 
Class V. PENTANDRIA. Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, LURID^E. 
Fig. (a) represents the germen, pistil, and calyx ; (6) the corolla spread, showing the anthers magnified ; (c) a section of the fruit of the 
natural size. 
The Strychnos Nux Vomica is a native of the East Indies, and is very common on the coast of Coro- 
mandel, where it flowers during the cold season. It is the tree called, by Plunknet, Cucurbitifera Mala- 
bar ensis cenoplia foliis rotundis, fructu orbiculari rubro, cujus grana sunt nuces vomica officinarum; described 
and figured in the Hortus Malabaricus, under the name of Caniram. 
This species of Strychnos is a middle-sized tree, with a short, crooked, thickish trunk, irregularly 
branched, and covered with a smooth ash-coloured bark. The leaves are opposite, short, petioled, ovate, 
shining, smooth on both sides, entire, three to five-nerved, differing in size from one inch and a half to four 
inches long, and from three to four inches broad. The flowers are small, greenish-white, and collected into 
small terminal cymes; they are said to exhale a strong disagreeable odour. The calyx is five-cleft, and 
deciduous: the corolla is monopetalous, of a pale green colour, and divided at the border into five segments: 
the filaments are five, very short, with roundish anthers; the germen is superior, roundish, and crowned 
with a single style, the length of the tube of the corolla. The fruit is a berry about the size of a pretty 
large apple, globular, covered with a smooth hard rind, of a rich orange colour when ripe, and filled with a 
soft jelly-like pulp. The seeds are generally five in number, and immersed in the pulp of the fruit. They 
are round and flat, about an inch in diameter, and a quarter of an inch thick, with a prominence in the 
middle, of a grey colour externally, and covered with a woolly matter, but internally hard and tough, 
like horn. 
The systematic name, Strychnos, which occurs in Pliny and Dioscorides, is derived from o-pTuvvpt, to 
overthrow, in allusion to the powerful effects of the plant to which it was assigned; the 2 rpv%yor of the Greeks 
being a kind of nightshade. It was Linneeus who adopted this name for the present genus, on account of 
the analogy of its poisonous qualities with the plant of the ancients. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — The taste of the vomic nut, which is the seed of the fruit 
or berry, is intensely bitter; it has little or no smell, and is so hard that it cannot be reduced into powder 
by beating, but requires to be filed down. According to an analysis by M. Chevreul, it consists of acidulous 
malate of lime, gum, vegeto-animal matter, bitter matter, fixed oil, colouring matter, (which was yellow, 
and probably starch, which could not be directly extracted on account of its desiccation,) earthy and alkaline 
salts, woody hairs, and wax, which latter appears to preserve the perisperm from humidity. Messrs. Pel- 
letier and Caventou have since discovered that the active properties of the plant depend on the two peculiar 
vegetable alkalies, strychnia and brucia. The former, strychnia, is also the active principle of the upas-tieute 
of Java. 
Poisonous Effects. — It is very generally believed amongst the lower classes of people in this 
country, that nux vomica, (by them called rat’s-bane ,) is capable of poisoning animals only: and on a 
coroner’s inquest held ten years ago, a juryman observed, that the vulgar imagine that it will not 
produce death to those persons who are born blind. So strongly, he said, was he impressed with this idea, 
that he should have had no hesitation in taking a quantity of it, before he had heard, on the present 
occasion, of its baneful effects on the human constitution. Nux vomica is one of the narcotico-acrid class 
of poisons, and seems to have a direct power over the spinal cord. It produces laborious respiration, 
which is followed by torpor, trembling, coma, convulsions, and death. It is fatal to dogs, hares, wolves, 
foxes, cats, rabbits, rats, ducks, crows, and other birds; hogs and goats eat it with impunity; so do several 
species ofRamphates or Toucan. Loureiro poisoned a horse by an infusion made of the seeds in a 
half-roasted state. 
“Hoffman reports that a young girl, ten years of age, labouring under an obstinate quartan fever, took, 
at two doses, fifteen grains of nux vomica; she died in a short time, after having experienced extreme 
anxieties, and having made some efforts to vomit.” 
