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XXVIII.—The Poisoned Arrows of the Abors and Mishmis of North-East India, and the Composition and Action of their Poisons.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012
Summary
1. The active ingredient of the poison of the Abor and Mishmi poisoned arrows is, in some of them, aconite, and, in others, croton oil. The former, apparently, is generally used by the Mishmis, and the latter by the Abors.
2. Although sufficient botanical materials have not been obtained to identify the species of aconite, the nature of the pharmacological action suggests that the species is one containing relatively more pseudo-aconitine than aconitine and, therefore, more resembling Aconitum ferox and A. heterophylloides than A. Napellus.
3. The arrow-poisons containing aconite were found to be much more lethal in warm-blooded animals than those containing croton; but the aconite-poisoned arrows that were examined carried usually too little aconite for a single arrow to produce death in man, even if the whole of the poison should be quickly absorbed.
4. The arrow-poisons containing croton, on the other hand, were found to be incapable of producing death in warm-blooded animals by the absorption of the poison into the circulation, and could do so only tardily by rendering the animal more susceptible to septicæmia, following inflammatory and even necrotic changes in the tissues into which the poison had been inserted.
5. While thus relatively inert in warm-blooded animals, and presumably, therefore, in man, the croton arrow-poison is extremely toxic in cold-blooded animals, being for them one of the most lethal of poisons, readily absorbable into the circulation and producing irritation and hæmorrhages in parts remote from the locality of insertion, and the latter, especially, in the alimentary canal. Remote effects may be produced even without any obvious evidence of local irritation in the place into which the poison has been inserted. These remarkable peculiarities in the action of the Government of India arrow-poison are reproduced by its ether extract and by the oil of Croton Tiglium.
6. Excepting failure to cause general action in warm-blooded animals, it is interesting to note that in many of their important effects, croton arrow-poisons as well as croton oil reproduce the effects of viperine venoms.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , 1916 , pp. 897 - 930
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1916
References
page 897 note * In Abor Jungles, by Angus Hamilton, 1912, pp. 13 to 18, 219 et seq.; The Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. v, 1908, p. 2, and vol. xvii, 1908, p. 377; Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, by E. T. Dalton, 1872, pp. 13 and 22.
page 898 note * Official reports received from the Government of India, Surgeon-General Sloggett, and Major Davidson, I.M.S.
page 899 note * In all the experiments of this investigation the rats were white rats, fed on a mixed animal and vegetable diet, and the frogs were Rana temporaria excepting a few indicated in the tables. Mammals were deprived of food for about twelve hours before any substance was administered, in order to lessen errors of dosage due to variations in the quantity of food in the alimentary canal.
The arrow-poisons and all other substances were dried in vacuo over sulphuric acid before they were administered. Usually, the poisons were injected under the skin of a flank in warm-blooded animals, and into the posterior part of the dorsal lymph-space in cold-blooded animals. Each dose of the arrow-poisons and of the aconite roots was separately weighed, and was suspended in 0·25 to 0·4 c.c. of distilled water or normal saline, unless the dose was too minute for separate weighing, in which case a suspension, made on the day of administration, of definite strength in a weak solution of gum arabic was subdivided so as to obtain the required dose; and this plan was also adopted with the ether extract of the Government of India arrow-poison and with croton oil, which, accordingly, were administered in the form of very weak emulsions.
Weights of animals and doses of substances are stated in grammes and parts of a gramme.
page 904 note * Described in Watt's, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. iii, 1890, p. 245.Google Scholar
page 909 note * Report of the British Association of Science, 1873; Reports, p. 128.
page 909 note † Groves, , Pharmaceutic Journal and Transactions, 1870, p. 433Google Scholar; Ibid., 1873, p. 293; Ibid., 1877, p. 444.
page 910 note * “The Aconites of India: a Monograph,” Annals of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, 1905.
page 910 note † I find also that this discrepancy is much more remarkably displayed with A. heterophylloides, and also with the aconite roots reputed to be sources of the aconite arrow-poisons, than it is with A. Napellus (Anglicum), of which I obtained an undoubted specimen from Dr Stapf of Kew.
page 911 note * They were submitted to Mr J. S. Gamble, C.S.I., a leading authority on Indian bamboos and other woods, and he considers that the bamboo is probably a botanically undescribed species.
page 912 note * For illustrations and descriptions of African poisoned arrows, see papers by the Author, on the Action, etc., of Strophanthus hispidus and S. sarmentosus, Transactions Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxxv, part iv, 1890, and vol. xlvii, part ii, 1910; and of Acokanthera Schimperi, Archives Internationales de Pharmacodynamie, vol. v, 1899.
page 915 note * In several of these and of the subsequent experiments, the blood was recognised by spectroscopic as well as chemical tests.
page 926 note * While this paper was passing through the press, I received by the courtesy of Professor Cash, of Aberdeen, a paper recently published by himself and Walter J. Dilling, on the oil and seeds of Croton Elliotianus, in which many resemblances in action are shown to exist between this croton and C. Tiglium.
page 926 note † Letter from Major Davidson, I.M.S., 16th October 1912.
page 927 note * Some Abor poisoned arrows have been examined by Major Windsor, I.M.S., and by Chuna Lal Bose, M.B., F.C.S., chemical examiners to the Government of India. The former expresses the opinion that a substance derived from the root, twigs, and leaves of a croton plant is the toxic ingredient, and the latter that either aconite or croton oil may be the poison.
page 929 note * “The Action of the Venom of Echis carinatus,” by the Author and DrGunn, James, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, vol. ccii, 1911, pp. 1–27.Google Scholar
page 929 note † Fig. 2 represents one of the smallest, and fig. 4 one of the largest, of the Abor and Mishmi poisoned arrows.
page 930 note * I am indebted to Mr Richard Muir for the coloured illustrations in this Plate. They well reproduce the original appearances.