m 
THE POISONOUS PLANTS OP THE MALAY 
PENINSULA. 
Plants possessing poisonous qualities have almost always a 
special value as drugs and are always worthy of careful inves- 
tigation, not only on account of their medicinal value, but also 
from the fact that they are liable to be used for criminal pur- 
poses or to be the cause of accidents to human life. 
The number of plants possessing poisonous properties in the 
Malay Peninsula is by no means large, and of those that are 
stated to be dangerous to life, but few have been at all carefully 
studied, either by analysis or experiment. Indeed, a vast 
amount of work in the analysis of our vegetable products 
remains to be done, when a suitable Laboratory is provided 
in which they can be properly investigated. 
Criminal poisoning is by no means as common here among the 
Malays as people are led to suppose The variety of poisons 
used is quite small, and apparently the knowledge of their use is 
mainly derived from the Chinese. The poisonous plants of the 
forests are seldom used by the Malays, who do not seem to know 
how to prepare them. It would appear, however, that there are 
deadly drugs known to the natives which have not been identi- 
fied, and to which we have at present no clue at all. 
The Malays always distinguish between poisons which cause 
death (Rachun) and those which intoxicate or produce sickness 
{Mabok). The latter class includes a number of drugs which 
have really but little effect on the body. 
Most of the vegetable poisons known to Malays are those 
which have been used as blood -poisons on the poisoned darts of 
the wild tribes, and of these, some contain well-known alkaloids 
or other principles, such as Strychnos Tieute which contains 
Brucine, and Pangium edul - which contains Hydrocyanic Acid. 
Others again are not known to contain any poisonous principle, 
although they are commonly reported to be poisonous. 
For convenience I treat of the plants used in dart-poison to- 
gether, as far as they have been identified, and some of these are 
here identified for the first time The poisoned darts of the 
Malayan Peninsula and the islands have been known for many 
centuries, and a good deal has been written about them by tra- 
vellers. The most -'important one Antiaris 'Ipoh or Upas) has 
been made the subject of a number of papers, but even now our 
knowledge of the drug is far from complete and within the past 
year even, it has been stated that the Antiaris of the Malay 
Peninsula is innocuous which is verv far from being the case. 
The most complete accounts of the plants used in the dart- 
poisons of the Sakai tribes, are those of Vaughan-Stevens and 
Newbold. The former supplied me w‘th pencil drawings and 
specimens of he plants used by the tribes w th which he came in 
contact, and I have been able to identify most of them, and to 
confirm his statements as to their use by reference to other races 
