THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXXIII. 
No. 392. 
AUGUST, 1860. 
Fourth Series. 
No. 68. 
Communications and Cases. 
POISONING 
BY COLCHICUM, THE BANUNCULACEiE, &c. 
By W. Litt, M.R.C.Y.S., Shrewsbury. 
A somewhat remarkable instance of the accidental poi¬ 
soning of cattle by the plant known commonly as the meadow 
saffron has recently fallen under my observation, and I am 
induced to believe a brief narrative of the facts may not be 
without interest to the readers of the Veterinarian. Such 
cases, although by no means uncommon in some districts, 
are seldom brought before the profession through the medium 
of the press, and there are doubtless many practitioners in 
England to whom they may be not less interesting than 
novel. Besides, the subject is one which opens a wide field 
for elucidation and discussion, and may probably awake the 
slumbering energies of some of the many able correspondents 
of the Veterinarian , for I fear we are but imperfectly ac¬ 
quainted as a body with the peculiar phenomena of these 
inadvertent vegetable poisonings. 
The facts of the cases alluded to are simply these. I was 
requested late on the evening of Friday, the 15th June, to see 
several cattle at The Isle, near this town, said to be suffering 
from severe diarrhoea, supposed to be produced partly by 
eating too eagerly of the luxuriant grass of the meadow, 
and partly by the peculiarly cold and wet weather to which 
we have been so long subjected. They were in all ten two- 
year-old bullocks, which had been purchased by Mr. Sandford, 
a few days previously, from the neighbourhood of the Lyth 
Hill, a totally different kind of pasture. They were all more 
xxxiii. 51 
