76 
ABSTRACTS AND GLEANINGS IN BOTANY, 
bronchi that I might save him. Having brought him near to a flexible steam- 
pipe we use for boiling, I made them hold the mouth open, and threw the 
steam from some distance, so as not to burn him, into his mouth and over his 
face. It had the effect. The spasm relaxed, and he was subsequently treated 
with ammonia vapour, and sent home to keep company with the tea-kettle. 
He assured me that until twelve o’clock that night he did not dare leave the 
tea-kettle for two minutes. The subsequent inflammatory action was easily 
controlled. What I wish to particularly call the attention of the profession to, 
is the great value of steam vapour in all cases poisoned by corrosive vapours. 
Ammonia can also be used, by saturating a handkerchief with a weak solution, 
and allowing the steam to blow through it. On referring, after the danger of 
the case was over, to works on the subject, I find neither Beck nor Taylor 
speak of bromine. While they recognize the compounds of this halogen with 
others, they do not speak of its peculiar poisonous effect or its mode of treat¬ 
ment. Of course, when a corrosive poison has been swallowed, the treatment is 
entirely different.— Airier. Journ. Pharm ., from the Detroit Rev. of Med. and 
Pliarm. April , 1857. 
The following note is appended by Professor Maisch :— 
A direct antidote to the poisonous effects of the inhalation of chlorine is sul¬ 
phuretted hydrogen, which ought to answer in like cases of bromine poisoning ; 
the halogen combining instantly with the hydrogen, liberates sulphur. We 
have tried it ourselves after accidentally inhaling chlorine, and obtained imme¬ 
diate relief. 
The Sugar Cane. 
The sugar cane is one of a genus of many species of tall grasses. Like most 
cultivated plants, it consists of several permanent varieties, differing in size, in 
the colour of the epidermis, and in the proportion of saccharine matter they 
contain. Like most of the cereals, the sugar cane has not been traced to its 
wild state. In its cultivated state it has been found in many independent 
places, often remote from each other, and bearing independent names. Its geo¬ 
graphical limits are nearly the same as those of cotton ; that is, extending from 
the equator to about the 30th degree of latitude. Like cotton, its culture has 
been pushed up to the 40th degree, but even with less success, for the cane 
takes a year to arrive at maturity, and is therefore liable to be cut off by severe 
frosts. In what country the sugar cane was 1 first cultivated it is out of our 
power to discover; but, as far as we know, it has been immemorially cultivated 
in the tropical and subtropical parts of Hindustan, in the Hindu-Chinese 
countries, in the tropical and subtropical parts of China and Japan, in the 
Malay and Philippine Archipelagos, and in the tropical islands of the Pacific. 
There is no evidence of its having been cultivated in any country west of the 
Indus. It was unknown as a wild plant in Australia and New Zealand, and is 
unquestionably an exotic in America. The Greeks and Romans knew nothing 
of sugar but as an article of trade. They were uncertain about the country 
which produced it, and ignorant of the plant which yielded it. The Arabs, on 
the contrary, brought the plant itself from India, with the Indian name of its 
produce, cultivated it in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece, in North Africa, in Spain, 
in Sicily, and in Southern Italy, manufacturing sugar from it in all these 
places. At what time the Arabs introduced the culture of the cane and the 
manufacture of sugar into Syria and Egypt is unknown, but it is ascertained 
that sugar was imported into Venice from the countries enumerated at the end 
of the tenth century. The Crusaders found tne cane cultivated in Syria as 
early as the beginning of the twelfth century. In the year 1420, or seventy-two 
years before the discovery of America, the Portuguese carried the sugar cane 
to Madeira. In the fifteenth century the Spaniards carried the cane and 
