Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1899-12-14
Use of Poisoned Weapons.

Use of Poisoned Weapons.
From the age of stone up to the
time when the art Of killing ones
neighbor led to the discovery Of pow
der and firearms, primitive people,
owing to the insuticiency Of their
weapons to cause prompt death, have
invented means of giving them pois-
onous qualities Poisoned weapons,
whether they are arrows, knives,
lances or what not, may get their ia
tai properties from either vegetable
or animal poisons. The South Amer
lean Indians use curare the natives
of India, Indo-China, Borneo and the
Moluccas employ (or rather did en-
ploy) the upas to poison their weap-
ons the negroes Of the Soudan and
the Congo still make use of a poison
extract from different varieties Of
strophanthus called m boumou or Inc,
according to the regions where it is
employed; the people Of South Afri-
ca, the Hottentots, the Bushmen, the
Katirs and the Akkas poison their ar
rows with the venom of divers SER
pents, the cobra de capello among 9TH
ers; certain tribes of equatorial At
rica, the N'Dris and the Banjiris, use
their arrows, after long burial in de-
composing corpses, to communicate
blood poisoning, which results in
speedy death; in Oceanica the ma
tives of New Caledonia, the Hebrides
and the Solomon group give their en-
emies lockjaw by soaking their arrows
in marshes containing large quanti-
ties of the bacillus of the 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-
teristics alkaloids of plant. which
serve as the basis of a deadly poison
Gus mixture. Curare, upas and m bou-
mou have as their principal elements
plants whose species vary with the
tribe, and which all belongs to the
strychnins family. The three last
named poisons, except that Of the
South African negroes, are Of micro
bal origin.
What are the value, duration and
activity of these poisons? Curare
keeps indefinitely; in 1857, in the
course of experiments in physiology
made in France with curarized arrows
brought in 1852 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 activity
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 pre-
pared. Malay weapons, even those
of steel, always keep their poisonous
properties. The black race that use
Inc claim that it viii keep only a short
time before it spoilS. Now ine, which is
an aqueous maceration of strophanthus
seeds, to which is added the juice Of a
fig or of a euphorbia, 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 veg
etable poisons used by primitive peo-
pies for their arrows keep indefinitely
and always make effective weapons.
This is not the case with poisons of
animal or microbial 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, becomes COW
cred in air with peculiar mold,
which has not been studied hitherto,
and which removes all poisonous ef-
fects 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 de-
composition. Thus these arrows are
borroF,I op1v durinU very short