Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1899-09-28
POISONED WEAPONS.
HOW SAVAGE NATIONS MAKE SURE
OF DEALING DEATH.

Bome of the yeno1nous Mixtures Used
by the f8arbarians Retain Their
Life Destroying Properties For an
Indefinite Time.
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
insuficiency 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 Indians use
curare the natives of India, Indo-
China, Borneo and the Moluecas en-
ploy. or rather did employ the upas to
poison their weapons; the negroes of
the Sudan and the Kongo still make
use of a poison extracted from different
varieties of strophanthus called M bou-
mou or inc. according to the regions
where 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 de capello among
others; certain tribes of equatorial
Africa, the N'Dris and the Banjiris,
use their arrows after long burial in
decomposing corpses, to communicate
blood poisoning, which results in
speedy death; in Oceanica the natives
of New Caledonia, the Hebrides and
the Solomon group give their enemies
lockjaw 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 alkaloids of plants, which serve
as the basis of deadly poisonous mix
ture. Curare, upas and IN boumou have
as their principal elements plants
whose species vary with the tribe. and
which all belong to the strychnine fam
lily. The three last named poisons, ex-
cept that of the South African negroes,
are of microbial origin.
What are the value, duration and
activity of these poisons2 Curare keeps
indefinitely In 1857 in the course Of
experiments in physiology made in
France with curarized arrows brought
in 1862 from equatorial America by La
Condamine. fowl scratched with one
of these arrows died in seven minutes.
Among the Ouiteto Indians, Jumps of
curare handed down from father to son
have preserved all their poisonous ac-
tivity, although 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 will keep only short time be-
fore it spoils Now, inc, which is an
aqueous maceration of strophanthus
seeds, to which is added the juice of a
fig or of a euphorbi. and generally also
vipers' venom, becomes covered with
mold at the end of 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 and al
ways make effective weapons.
This is not the case with poisons OF
animal or microbian origin. AS we
have seen above, the Bushmen, the
Kafirs and the Al1kas poison the points
of their arrows with serpent venom,
especially that of the cobra. At the end
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
Doisons Of animal or microbian origin.