Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1890-08-23 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CURIOSITIES OF POISON. A very intellig' ant and trustworthy resident oa ! the borders of a North American Indian tribe, tells reel singular story. Re had a young Indian girt in hie kitchen for years. When she first entered Ihis service, so many of her relatives and friends 1' came to see her that he had to give her peremptory I orders to admit nobody. Urefortimately one of her ! first visitors after this decree had gone forth we* an old medicine man of her tribe, whom she Wade I featly refused to admit to her kitchen, and who, consequently, went away furiously angry, and YOVir mug all sorts of vengeanoe. Some months after! wards, the old doctor met the girl. He had, apparently, quite forgotten the Mena he had receive 4 and shook hands very heartily with her. She happened to have a slight wound in her hand, and after the old man had grasped it she saw, to her dismay, that this wound was covered by a black patch, and dm instantly suspected that it was a patch of poison, and she told him ! so. The old man frankly admitted that her suspicions were correct. She had insulted him when I they last met, and now he had paid her for it. For I one month in every year, as long as she lived, ha told her that her skin would break out in black blotches. Twelve months afterwards, theaftliction predicted actually befell the girl, and every year, as long as she continued in the parries of the narrator of this story, her skin became blotched and patched ell over with Week marks, which continued to dia. figare her for a month and then disappeared. A Government officer at Winnipeg mentions in one of his official reports a very remarkable poison, which had the effect of paralysing the muscles of the face. Speaking of a woman to whom it bad I been administered without her own consent or I knowledge, this official says "Only the eye* moved? and as they were intensely black and rather sparkling, the ghastly deformity was rendered , the more glaring. The most singular elect, hoeever was produced by her laugh. She was a jolly,. good-natured squaw, and laughed upon the slightest provocation. her eyes sparkled, Vail her ha La l' was musical to a degree; but not Imuscle moved to denote the merriment on that el' preasiouless face. One felt that some Me else laughed behind that rigid integument. No idea could be formed of what she thought at any time." One very interesting result of modern study of poisons is the discovery of some ground for behaving that certain diseases, both of body and mind, may be attributable to poison in the syatern. Dr. 13. W. Richer:lam, for instance, says that soinnambnliara, he has not the elighteet doubt, " is produced by the formation in the body of peculiar substance, which may be derived from the starchy parts of the body, and has the effect of the chemical substance known as arayleue I believe that," Rays Dr. Richardson, " becauee you produce artificial somnambulism by the use of that substance. Under its influence persons car, be made to walk about ancioneciously in the same way as the somnambulist does." The same reepectad  authority "arms that there are sub.-lances imewn capable of predating extreme melancholy. " There in a peculiar offensive sulphur compound called morcaptan. A little of that administered to any one produote the intensest melancholy, tc-nding ' almost to suicide. We oen sometimes detect e similar offensive substance in the breeth of pedants who are mitering from melancholie." thinsilneYi there is a well-known poison which produces the °fleets ot scarlet fever. There is another, a large dose 61 which brings about all the symptoms cholera; arid there eppear to be several polsong which produoe idiocy or actual moshicas--erodu .QatoolVe fitaterdazd Jelereal for Anzutt,-1138Qt•