The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1899-10-06
POISONED WEAPONS.
How Barbarians of Different Nation.
Make Sure of Dealing
Death.

When the art OF killing ones neigh])or
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 poisons. The South
American Indians use curare; the ma
tives of India, Indo-China, Borneo and
the Moluccas employ Tor rather did en-
ploy) the upas to poison their weapons;
the negroes of the Soudan and the Con-
60 still make use of a poison extracted
from different varieties of stroT,hanthus
called m'boumou or inc, according to
the regions where it is employed; the
people of South Africa, the Hottentots,
the bushmen, the Kafirs and the Akkas
poison their arrows with the venom of
divers serpents, the cobra -decapello
among. others; certain tribes of equa-
torial Africa, the N'Dris and the Ban
jiris, use their arrows, after long burial
in decomposing corpses, to communi-
cate blood poisoning, which results in
speedy death; in Oceanica the natives
of New Caledonia, the Hebri,les and the
Solomon group give their: enemies lock-
jaw by soaking their arrows in marshes
containing large quantities of the bacil-
lus 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 m boumou have
as their principal elements plants
whose species vary with the tribe, and
which all belong to the strychnine fam
ily.~ The three last-named poisons, ex-
cept that of the South African negroes,
are of microbal origin.
What are the value, duration and &C.
tivity of these poisons? Curare keeps
indefinitely; in 1857, in the course of ex-
periments in physiology made in France
with curarized arrows brought in 1852
from equatorial America by La Conda-
mine, a 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 activity,
although covered with blood. The same
may be said for the upas, which, kept
in little sections of bamboo for seven
01~ Srh fos,
qualities as when freshly prepared.
Malay weapons, even those of steel, al
ways keep their poisonous properties.
The black races that use inc claim that
it will keep only short time before
it spoils. Now inc, which is an aqueous
maceration of stropanthus seeds, to
which is added the juice of fig or of a
euphorbia, and generally also vipers'
venom, becomes covered with mold at
the end of few weeks, but notwith-
standing it has preserved all it's toxic
properties; guinea pigs have been killed
in few minutes by being scratched
with arrows whose points had nodded.
In fact, the vegetable poisons used by
primitive people for their arrows keep
indefinitely and always 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 Akkas 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 alcohol, be-
comes covered in air with a peculiar
mold, which has not been studied hith-
erto, and which removes all poisonous
effect from the venom. The poison used
on the arrows of the N 'Dris of the upper
Ubanghi is nothing else than the septic
vibrio (microbe of blood poisoning),
which dies in the air if it is not in the
presence of decomposition; thus these
arrows are harmful only during very
short time. AS for the arrows of the
New Caledonians, which infect their
victim with tetanus, authorities do not
agree about the duration of their harm
full action, although it is proved that
the bacillus of Nicolaier cannot live ex-
cept in very moist medium and togeth-
er with other bacilli, harmless or 9th
erwise, such as the septic bacillus,
which, as we have seen, dies in 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 poi.
sons of animal or microbian origin
La Nature.