THE RELATION OF DIET TO DISEASE 461 
hepatitis. This toxin is decidedly hemolytic. The effects 
of this plant are always permanent, total recovery being 
very rare. 
The larkspur (25 different varieties), on the contrary, 
shows prompt recovery after treatment, but no establish- 
ment of toleration. These plants give rise to nausea, 
vomiting and great agitation and destroy many animals 
yearly. The poisons are included in four alkaloids, all 
spinal cord depressants resembling aconite in general 
character. 
These poisonous plants all produce more or less gas- 
trointestinal inflammation and practically all are 
destructive in their action on the liver, pancreas and 
kidney. It is impossible to form even approximate esti- 
mates of the damage done by them because of the general 
ignorance of the subject. The Division of Botany has 
been collecting for the past few years specific information 
concerning these plants, but the individual plants are not 
equally poisonous, and all animals do not show the same 
susceptibility to the poison. Veratrum viride, for 
instance, is eaten with relish by sheep and elk and is 
decidedly toxic for the horse. In many the toxic factor 
has not been isolated. Some, as Euphorbia, are poisonous 
only when fed in honey derived from its flowers. 
The influence of diet on the general health of animals 
is very far reaching and very inclusive. Metabolic dis- 
turbances are undoubtedly at times the result of 
unbalance — deficiencies on the one side, excesses on the 
other, at times are probably much more the results of 
bacterial invasions aided and abetted by the food admin- 
istered, at still other times are poisonous either in their 
own content or from the degradation products resulting 
from digestion or bacterial decomposition. 
