The History of Java, v. 1-2Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir
History
The History of Java, v. 1-2
Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir
Java (Indonesia) -- History
"If the simple or unprepared sap is mixed with the extract of tobacco,
instead of the spices mentioned, it is rendered equally, perhaps more,
active. Even the pure juice, unmixed and unprepared, appears to act
with a force equal to that which has undergone the preparative process.
Birds are very differently affected by this poison. Fowls have a
peculiar capacity to resist its effects: a fowl died in twenty-four
hours after the wound; others have recovered after being partially
affected.
"The eighteenth and succeeding experiments were made with the poison
prepared from the chetik. Its operation is far more violent and
rapid than that of the anchar, and it affects the animal system in a
different manner. While the anchar operates chiefly on the stomach,
alimentary canal, the respiration and circulation, the chetik is
determined to the brain and nervous system: a relative comparison
of the appearances on dissection, demonstrates in a striking manner
the peculiar operation of each. A general view of the effects of the
chetik on quadrupeds is given in these experiments. After the previous
symptoms of faintness, drowsiness, and slight convulsions, it acts by
a sudden impulse, which like a violent apoplexy prostrates at once the
whole nervous system. In two of these experiments this sudden effect
took place in the sixth minute after the wound, in another in the
seventh minute: the animals suddenly started, fell down head foremost,
and continued in convulsions until death ensued. This poison affects
fowls in a much more violent manner than that of the anchar. They are
first affected by a heat and itching of the breast and wings, which
they shew by violently pecking those parts; this is followed by a
loose discharge from the bowels, when they are seized with tremors
and fluttering of the wings, which having continued a short time,
they fall down head foremost, and continue convulsed till death. In
some instances, particularly young fowls, the poison acts with great
rapidity; death has frequently occurred within the space of a minute
after a puncture with a poisoned dart.
"Taken into the stomach of quadrupeds, the chetik acts as a most
violent poison; but it requires about thrice the period to produce
the same effect which a wound produces. But the stomach of fowls can
resist its operation. Having mixed about double the quantity generally
adhering to a dart with the food of a fowl, it consumed it without
shewing any marks of indisposition. The poison of the anchar does by
no means act as violently on quadrupeds as that of the chetik. I have
given it to a dog: it produced at first nearly the same symptoms as
a puncture; oppression of the head, twitchings, faintness, laborious
respiration, violent contraction of the pectoral and abdominal muscles,
&c. which continued nearly two hours; but after the complete evacuation
of the stomach by vomiting, the animal gradually recovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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