Abstract
IN 1889 a French naval surgeon, M. Ledantec, published in the Annales de l'Institut Pasteur the result of some investigations he had made into the nature of the arrow poison of the natives of the New Hebrides. Wounds from these arrows give rise, as is well known, to tetanus, and M. Ledantec was able, by the subcutaneous injection of the scraped off poison, to kill guinea-pigs under typical tetanic symptoms. He learnt from a Kanaka that they are prepared by smearing the arrow-heads (which are made of human bone) first with tree gum and then with mud from a swamp, which mud he found to contain numbers of Nicolaier's tetanus bacillus.
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JONES, A. Arrow Poison. Nature 45, 343 (1892). https://doi.org/10.1038/045343a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045343a0
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