The history of Sumatra : $b Containing an account of the government, laws, customs and manners of the native inhabitantsMarsden, William
History
The history of Sumatra : $b Containing an account of the government, laws, customs and manners of the native inhabitants
Marsden, William
Natural history -- Indonesia -- Sumatra; Sumatra (Indonesia)
In the cure of the kurap, tetter or ringworm, they apply the daun
galinggan (Cassia quadri-alata) a herbaceous shrub with large pinnated
leaves and a yellow blossom. In the more inveterate cases, barangan
(coloured arsenic, or orpiment), a strong poison, is rubbed in.
The milky exsudation from the sudu-sudu (Euphorbia neriifolia) is valued
highly by the natives for medicinal purposes. Its leaves eaten by sheep
or goats occasion present death.
UPAS TREE.
On the subject of the puhn upas or poison tree (Arbor toxicaria, R.), of
whose properties so extraordinary an account was published in the London
Magazine for September 1785 by Mr. N.P. Foersch, a surgeon in the service
of the Dutch East India Company, at that time in England, I shall quote
the observations of the late ingenious Mr. Charles Campbell, of the
medical establishment at Fort Marlborough. "On my travels in the country
at the back of Bencoolen I found the upas tree, about which so many
ridiculous tales have been told. Some seeds must by this time have
arrived in London in a packet I forwarded to Mr. Aiton at Kew. The poison
is certainly deleterious, but not in so terrific a degree as has been
represented. Some of it in an inspissated state you will receive by an
early opportunity. As to the tree itself, it does no manner of injury to
those around it. I have sat under its shade, and seen birds alight upon
its branches; and as to the story of grass not growing beneath it,
everyone who has been in a forest must know that grass is not found in
such situations." For further particulars respecting this poison-tree,
which has excited so much interest, the reader is referred to Sir George
Staunton's Account of Lord Macartney's Embassy Volume 1 page 272; to
Pennant's Outlines of the Globe Volume 4 page 42, where he will find a
copy of Foersch's original narrative; and to a Dissertation by Professor
C.P. Thunberg upon the Arbor toxicaria Macassariensis, in the Mem. of the
Upsal Acad. for 1788. The information given by Rumphius upon the subject
of the Ipo or Upas, in his Herb. Amboin. Volume 2 page 263, will also be
perused with satisfaction.* It is evident that some of the exaggerated
stories related to him by the people of Celebes (the plant not being
indigenous at Amboina) suggested to Mr. Foersch, the fables with which he
amused the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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