Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — Putrefactive Poisoning. [ARTICLE]

Putrefactive Poisoning.

Permit me to supplement your interesting annotation upon “Ballets as Microbe Carriers” by the following remarks, says a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette. Although in the case of the bullet the infection with poisonous bacteria is accidental, owing to striking the earth, yet it is reported that there is a tribe of aborigines in the New Hebrides who purposely make use of a telluric or earth poison for their arrows. On their arrowheads they smear dry earth taken from marshy ground, with the result that the wounds inflioted by their arrows usually end fatally in tetanus and lockjaw. Allied micro-organisms are probably also the source of those deadly arrow poisons which are obtained by savages from putrefactive matter. In the Norwegian whale fisheries, after having driven the whales toward the shore, they are surrounded by a net, which prevents them through fear returning to the deeper sea. The whales are next struck with prepared putrefactive poisoned harpoons. In about twenty-four hours some of the whales begin to exhibit signs of exhaustion, probably through septic or suppurative poisoning, and are hence readily oaptured. It is then found that the harpoons are imbedded in masses of inflammatory gangrenous tissue. These harpoons are removed and carefully preserved without being wiped or cleaned, to be employed for the next shoal of whales, when these harpoons are again used, producing and repeating their septic or poisonous properties. The explanation of this rapid poisoning is due to-the harpoons carrying with them the germ of bacteria of an iufeotive inflammation, inoculating the whales by getting up infective or poisonous inflammation. Kero and Domitian used special putrid preparations made from the sea-hair (apiysis punctata), a kind of sea-slug or snail, for secretly poisoning their enemies. Similarly, from tirrie immemorial, some savages have used dried putrid animal poisona for their arrows to kill men and animals. The Mosaic law, prescribed an eye for an eye, a tooth 'for a tooth.