Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In Proportion As
The Preparation Of The Curare Is Simple, That Of The Poison Of
Moyobamba Is A Long And Complicated Process.
With the juice of the
bejuco de ambihuasca, which is the principal ingredient, are mixed
pimento, tobacco, barbasco (Jacquinia armillaris), sanango (Tabernae
montana), and the milk of some other apocyneae.
The fresh juice of the
ambihuasca has a deleterious action when in contact with the blood;
the juice of the mavacure is a mortal poison only when it is
concentrated by fire; and ebullition deprives the juice of the root of
Jatropha manihot (the manioc) of all its baneful qualities. In rubbing
a long time between my fingers the liana which yields the potent
poison of La Peca, when the weather was excessively hot, my hands were
benumbed; and a person who was employed with me felt the same effects
from this rapid absorption by the uninjured integuments.
I shall not here enter into any detail on the physiological properties
of those poisons of the New World which kill with the same promptitude
as the strychneae of Asia,* (* The nux vomica, the upas tieute, and
the bean of St. Ignatius, Strychnos Ignatia.) but without producing
vomiting when they are received into the stomach, and without denoting
the approach of death by the violent excitement of the spinal marrow.
Scarcely a fowl is eaten on the banks of the Orinoco which has not
been killed with a poisoned arrow; and the missionaries allege that
the flesh of animals is never so good as when this method is employed.
Father Zea, who accompanied us, though ill of a tertian fever, every
morning had the live fowls allotted for our food brought to his
hammock together with an arrow, and he killed them himself; for he
would not confide this operation, to which he attached great
importance, to any other person. Large birds, a guan (pava de monte)
for instance, or a curassao (alector), when wounded in the thigh, die
in two or three minutes; but it is often ten or twelve minutes before
life is extinct in a pig or a peccary. M. Bonpland found that the same
poison, bought in different villages, varied much. We had procured at
the river Amazon some real Ticuna poison which was less potent than
any of the varieties of the curare of the Orinoco. Travellers, on
arriving in the missions, frequently testify their apprehension on
learning that the fowls, monkeys, guanas, and even the fish which they
eat, have been killed with poisoned arrows. But these fears are
groundless. Majendie has proved by his ingenious experiments on
transfusion, that the blood of animals on which the bitter strychnos
of India has produced a deleterious effect, has no fatal action on
other animals. A dog received a considerable quantity of poisoned
blood into his veins without any trace of irritation being perceived
in the spinal marrow.
I placed the most active curare in contact with the crural nerves of a
frog, without perceiving any sensible change in measuring the degree
of irritability of the organs, by means of an arc formed of
heterogeneous metals. Galvanic experiments succeeded upon birds, some
minutes after I had killed them with a poisoned arrow. These
observations are not uninteresting, when we recollect that a solution
of the upas-poison poured upon the sciatic nerve, or insinuated into
the texture of the nerve, produces also a sensible effect on the
irritability of the organs by immediate contact with the medullary
substance. The danger of the curare, as of most of the other
strychneae (for we continue to believe that the mavacure belongs to a
neighbouring family), results only from the action of the poison on
the vascular system. At Maypures, a zambo descended from an Indian and
a negro, prepared for M. Bonpland some of those poisoned arrows, that
are shot from blowing-tubes to kill small monkeys or birds. He was a
man of remarkable muscular strength. Having had the imprudence to rub
the curare between his fingers after being slightly wounded, he fell
on the ground seized with a vertigo, that lasted nearly half an hour.
Happily the poison was of that diluted kind which is used for very
small animals, that is, for those which it is believed can be recalled
to life by putting muriate of soda into the wound. During our passage
in returning from Esmeralda to Atures, I myself narrowly escaped an
imminent danger. The curare, having imbibed the humidity of the air,
had become fluid, and was spilt from an imperfectly closed jar upon
our linen. The person who washed the linen had neglected to examine
the inside of a stocking, which was filled with curare; and it was
only on touching this glutinous matter with my hand, that I was warned
not to draw on the poisoned stocking. The danger was so much the
greater, as my feet at that time were bleeding from the wounds made by
chegoes (Pulex penetrans), which had not been well extirpated. This
circumstance may warn travellers of the caution requisite in the
conveyance of poisons.
An interesting chemical and physiological investigation remains to be
accomplished in Europe on the poisons of the New World, when, by more
frequent communications, the curare de bejuco, the curare de raiz, and
the various poisons of the Amazon, Guallaga, and Brazil, can be
procured, without being confounded together, from the places where
they are prepared. Since the discovery of prussic acid,* (* First
obtained by Scheele in the year 1782. Gay-Lussac (to whom we are
indebted for the complete analysis of this acid) observes that it can
never become very dangerous to society, because its peculiar smell
(that of bitter almonds) betrays its presence, and the facility with
which it is decomposed makes it difficult to preserve.) and many other
new substances eminently deleterious, the introduction of poisons
prepared by savage nations is less feared in Europe; we cannot however
appeal too strongly to the vigilance of those who keep such noxious
substances in the midst of populous cities, the centres of
civilization, misery, and depravity.
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