Professional poisoning in carrying out highway robbery was at one time spread over every portion of the province of Bengal, and there is no doubt it was equally prevalent in Bombay and Madras. Murders were constantly committed along the road upon unwary travellers who rashly joined company with strangers deliberately purposing to kill and rob them; and numbers of thefts were also perpetrated by the administration of drugs to render their victims insensible and at their mercy. The crime was greatly aided by the facility with which poison in some form or other could be obtained. Many shopkeepers traded in poisons, selling these goods openly and with the most reckless indifference. Even when the law laid restrictions on the sale of poisons, the evilly disposed could provide himself from the roots of trees in the jungle, garden or wayside, or they might be bought from the numerous travelling quacks, and the local _hakims_ or “native doctors” were often not unwilling to supply the noxious drugs. Moreover, in almost every village some hag of evil repute, half-witch, half-midwife, given to criminal practices and commonly believed to be a professional poisoner, did a systematic business in supplying drugs. Upon one old woman, who was arrested near Sasseram in 1835, were found letters and credentials from numerous members of the poisoning community at large who dealt with her. The drug most commonly used by the road poisoners is produced from the datura plant, _stramonium_, both the purple flowered and the white flowered, and is prepared from the seeds or the leaves. Its noxious effects were well known to the ancients. In “Purchas: His Pilgrimage,” that most famous series of seventeenth century travels, we read, “They have (in India) an Herbe called Durroa which causeth distraction without understanding anything done in a man’s presence; sometimes it maketh a man sleepe as if hee was dead for the space of four and twenty hours and in much quantity it killeth.” It is referred to in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” Garcias ab Horto makes mention of “an herbe called daturah, which if it be eaten, for twenty-four hours following takes away all sense of grief, makes them incline to laughter and mirth.” As an instrument in facilitating theft and other criminal designs its properties were widely recognised. In Bengal it was usually given as an ingredient of sweetmeats, or mixed with bread or coffee, sherbet, milk, _tari_, “native spirits,” or introduced into tobacco. It was relied upon to stupefy; not necessarily to kill, but to produce intoxication or delirium, or profound lethargy resembling coma, with dilated pupils but natural respiration. Even when life is not seriously endangered, the effects of the poison upon the person are such that they seldom recover their bodily vigour. One was still a cripple after a dose taken seven years before; another continued unable to articulate and was like a man stricken with paralysis. Memory is long impaired