Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-02-16

seem not only inhumsn but anti-human.
The use OF poisoned weapons is almost en-
tirely confined to the inhabitants of those ex-
quisitely beautiful groups of islands which
lie under the equator or within a few de-
grees to north or south Of it. These peo-
pie, such as the Solomon Islanders or the
Santa Cruz Islanders, some Of whom are
among the finest physical specimens of man
kind, are the most horrible savages on earth.
They spend their whole life in bIoodshed,
and are not only cannibals, but addicted to
the use ofpoison as the main, ifnot the only
weapon Of war. They have spears and ar
rows pointed and barbed with sherp bone or
wood hardened in the fire, and every one Of
these is poisoned so that the least Craze,
scarcely enough to draw blood, is fatal.
Commodore Goodenough, commanding the
British squadron in those seas, died in in
describable torment from a wound 50 slight
that it was not believed at first he had been
touched at all; and more deaths have oc-
CURED among sailors and traders from this
cause than from any other.
POISONED IN A MUSEUM.
A bundle of arrows from the Solomon
Islands was sent to England many years
ago, and deposited with other curiosities in
museum at Colchester. A gentleman visit
ing the museum foolishly handled these
weapons, and, feeling the point of one of the
arrows, inflicted prick like that of pin.
He died of it, in raving agony, three days
afterward. The symptoms are invariably
those OF tetanus or lockjaw, a malady for
which no remedy has ever been discovered.
Where do these savages get this atrocious
poison and what does it consist Of? They
get it from their own flesh and blood, and it
consists of nothing. but the fluids of the hu-
man body. When they want supply of
poisoned weapons they take a number Of
eorpses after battle, or they kill number
of prisoners expressly, and, having left the
bodies to putrefF in the burning equatorial
sun for some days, they stick them full Of
spear and arrow heads, which they leave
there for weeks or months, or until the bodies
are entirely dried up. That is the whole
process. When those spears and arrows are
drawn out, they are imperishably stepped in
poison as deadly as that of Echys carinata
or wouraIi-a poison which is absolutely de-
structlve Of the life Of every creature whose
blood it touches.
THE DEADLY MICRoBE.
The possession Of the secret of poisoning
by means of putrefed animal fluids by the
most degraded OF the human family is all
the more remarkable because the most ad-
vanced men OF science have only recently
discovered the explanation OF the phenomena
produced by that poison. The putrefaction
Of the animal fluids itself brings into exist
ence a multitude of microscopic living or
germs or microbes, as they are now
Called and it is the Introduction and in
finite multiplication of these in the healthy
blood that produces paralysis and death. 1
nave seen man-oi-warsman, magnificent
specimen of vigorous, redundant manhood,
wounded SO slightly by a poisoned arrow
that he himself laughed at it and scarcely
any abrasion was visible, yet reduced before
sundown to utter helplessness, and consigned
to the deep by his horror-stricken shipmates
before another day had passed.
EDWARD WAKEFIELD.