Daily new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1897-1906, 1899-10-12

From the age of stone up to the time
when the art of killing ones neighbor
led to the discovery Of powder and fire.
arms primitive peoples, owing to the
insufficiency of their weapons to cause
prompt death, have invented means of
giving them poisonous qualities. Poi
soned weapons, whether they are ar
rows, knives lances or what not may
get their fatal properties from either
vegetable or animal pcisons.
The South American In6ians use
curare; the natives of India, Indo-
! China, Borneo and the Moluccas en-
ploy, or rather did employ, the upas to
poison their weapons; the negroes of
the Sudan and the Kengo still make
use of poison extracted from different
varieties of strophanthus called m bou
mou or ire, according to the regions
whore it is employed; the people of
South Africa, the HoUtentots, the Bush
men, the Kaffirs and the Akkas, poison
their arrows with the venom of divers
serpents. the cobra Gle capello among
others; certain tribes of equatorial
Africa, the N Dris and the Baniiris
use their arrows after long burial in
decomposing corpses, to communicate
blood poisoning, which results in
speedy death; in Oceaniea the natives
of New Caledonia, the Hebrides and
the Solomon group give their enemies
loekjaw by soaking their arrows in
marshes containing large quantities of
! the bacillus Of tetanus.
The first three kinds of poison are
/ practically of vegetable origin, though
/ the local medicine men mix with their
preparations red ants, snakes venom
\ toads' eyes, etc. They are the charac-
teristic alkalolds Of plants, which serve
/ as the basis Of a deadly poisonous mix
I ture. Curare, upas and III boumou have
as their principal elements plants
whose species vary with the tribe, and
which all haioAs to the strychnine fam
! lily. The three last named poisons, ex-
cept that of the South African negroes,
are of microbial origin
Whit are the value, duration and
activity of these poisons? Curare keeps
/ indefinitely In 1857 in the course of
experiments in physiology made in
4 France with cHrari2ed arrows brought
in 1752 from equatorial America by La
/ Gondamine fewl scratched with one
/ of these arrows died in seven minutes
Among the oaiteto Indians, Jumps Of
I curare HANDED down from father to SON
! have preserved all their poisonous ae-
/ tivity altloa Ii covered with mold
The same may be said for the upas
which, kept in little sections of bamboo
for seven or eight years, retains the
same active qualities as when freshly
prepared Malay weapons, even those
of steel, always keep their poisonous
properties
The black races that use inc claim
that it VIII keep only a short time be-
fore it gp0ils Now inc, which is an
aqueous maeeration of strophantbus
seeds, to which is added the juice of
fig or of a euphorbi and generally also
vipers' venom, becomes covered with
mold at the end Of a few weeks, but
notwithstanding it has preserved all its
toxic properties. Guinea pigs have been
killed in a few minutes by being
! scratched with arrows whose points
/ had nodded. In fact, the vegetable
poisons used by primitive peoples for
their arrows keep indefinitely aud al
ways make effective weapons.
This is not the case with poisons of
animal or mierobian origin As we
have seen above, the Bushmen the
Kaf1irs and the Akkas poison the points
of their arrows with serpent venom
+ ia11 - b.,
of two or three weeks their arms have
lost all harmful quality. This is due to
single cause The venom of snakes
which is preserved indefinitely in alco-
hol, becomes covered in air with a pc
culiar mold, which has not been studied
hitherto and which removes all poison
Gus effect from the venom.
The poison used on the arrows of the
n Dris of the Upper Ubanghi is moth
ing else than the septic vibrio (microbe
of blood poisoning), which dies in the
air if it is not in the presence of de-
composition Thus those arrows are
harmful only during very short time
AS for the arrows of the New Gale
domains, which infect their victim with
tetanus. authorities do not agree about
the duration of their harmful action,
although it is proved that the bacillus
of Nicolaier cannot live except in very
moist medium and together with other
bacilli, harmless or otherwise, such as
| the septic bacillus, which. as we have
seen. dies in a short time.
| Thus in all cases the poisoned arrows
of the races that make use of vegetable
alkaloids are much more to be feared
| than those Of the tribes that employ