Iuka reporter. (Iuka, Miss.) 1888-1894, 1890-04-10

ionSer serves ltS vital purpose. MahIS
doctor has lost his life by the mere pri, nc
of needle which he had wetted wit.
this poison in sewing up wound.t
Now, how the savages of the Pacific
Islands came to know of the existence OF
this natural poison, if may call it so,
cannot be explained, for they have
not even the ruaiments of medical sci
cnce. But that they have been only too
familiar with it from time immemorial is
certain. 1t is a curious fact that the fur
thcr you go from the equator the less
dangerous the savages- are, while the
nearer you approach the equator the more
you need to be on your guard against
barbarous practices which seem not only
lnhuman, but anti-human. The use of
poisoned weapons is almost entirely con-
lined to the inhabitants of those ex-
qusitely beautiful groups of islands
which lie under the equator or within
few degrees to north or south of it.
These people, such as the Solomon
Islanders or the Santa Cruz Islanders
some of whom are among the finest phys
1cal specimens of mankind, are the most
horrible savages on earth. They spend
their whole life in bloodshed, and are
not only cannibals, but addicted to the
use of poison as the main if not the only
weapon of war. They have spears and
arrows pointed and barbed with sharp
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 Good
enough, commanding the British squad
ron in those seas, died in indescribable
torment from a wound so 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 A bun
die of arrows from the Solomon Islands
was sent to England many years ago and
deposited with other curiosities in
museum at Colchester. A gentleman
visiting 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 symp-
toms are invariably those of tetanus, or
lockjaw, malady for which no remedy
has ever been discovered
Where do these savages get this afro
cious poison and what does it consist off,
They get it from their own flesh and
blood, and it consists of nothing but the
fluids of the human body. When they
want supply of poisoned weapons they
take number of corpses after battle, or
they kill number of prisoners expressly,
and having left the bodies TO putrefy 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, OF until the bodies arc en-
tirely dried up. That is the whole pro-
cess. When those spears and arrows are
drawn out, they are imperishably stepped
in poison as deadly as that of Ecliys car
ipata or wourali a poison absolutely de-
structive of the life Of every creature
whose blood it touches.
The possession of the secret of poison
ing by means of putrefied animal fluids,
by the most degraded of the human
family, is all the more remarkable because
the most advanced men of science have
only recently discovered the explanation
of the phenomenap produced by that poison.
The putrefaction of the animal fluids it.
self brings into existence multitude of
microscopic living organisms, germs, or
microbes, as they are now called; and it
is lilc lutTOuuCttOIi dut luuullc mult1pll-
cation of these in the healthy blood that
produces paralysis and death. ! have
seen man of-war's man, magnificent
specimen of vigorous, redundant man
hood, wounded SO slightly by poisoned
arrow that he himself laughed at it, and
scarcely any abrasion was visible, yet re-
duced before shutdown to utter helpless
ness, and consigned to the deep by his
horror-stricken shipmates before another
day had passed.