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"Your dead man was murdered by means of aconite, of which, you know, the active principle is the deadly alkaloid aconitine." Craig pulled down from the shelf above him one of his well-thumbed standard works on toxicology. He turned the pages and read: "Pure aconite is probably the most actively poisonous substance with which we are acquainted.
It were vain, speaking of the mottled amanita, for instance, to allege as a reason the presence of an alkaloid fatal to the grubs, for we should have to ask ourselves why the imperial, the amanita of the Caesars, which is wholly free from poison, is rejected no less uncompromisingly than the venomous species.
It belongs to the holly family, but contains a bitter principle similar to, if not identical with, theine, or the alkaloid found in tea and coffee." It is taken in a somewhat singular way. The mate, a gourd stained black, holding three or four ounces of water, is nearly filled with the coarsely-powdered yerba.
What is it like?" "Stale tobacco," I replied. "Exactly nicotine. Two or three drops on the mouth-end of a cigar or cigarette. The intended victim thinks it is only natural. But it is the purest form of the deadly alkaloid fatal in a few minutes, too." He examined the thin little cigarettes more carefully.
Two months after I had entered upon my duties, and found myself quietly among my books, the bond was renewed. After two months, in which I passed from laudanum to crude opium, I finally settled on the alkaloid morphia, as being the most powerful of all the preparations of opium.
It was the amanita, the deadliest and the most widely distributed of the fungi, and the direst of all vegetable poisons to man and beast alike. The alkaloid which it contains takes effect only some hours after its ingestion, when it has entered the blood-streams and begun its disintegrating action upon the red corpuscles. The dogs must have partaken of it on the preceding afternoon.
But as the reaction employed indicates very small quantities of quinine, it may be safely assumed that the barks examined contained not a trace of this alkaloid, and it can scarcely be doubted that the deficiency of sunlight in our hothouses is one of the causes of the deficiency of quinine.
He had used the usual tests, and found the presence of the alkaloid of hemlock, known under the name of conia. In his opinion the death of the deceased was caused by the administration of an extract of hemlock. Q. Then in your opinion the deceased has been poisoned? A. Yes, I have not the least doubt on the subject, I detected the conia very soon after the tests were applied.
It's a strange poison an alkaloid, I'm sure, but not one that one ordinarily encounters. Still, I've made a good beginning. It won't take long to determine it now." Craig listened with deep interest, though without comment, when I related what had happened, both Norton's conversation and about the strange visitor whom we had had peering into our windows.
The victim suffers from nausea and vomiting, and becomes so mentally debilitated that asylum treatment is required. =Belladonna.= The root, leaves, and berries, of the Atropa belladonna are poisonous from the presence of alkaloid atropine. Symptoms. Dryness of mouth and throat, intense thirst, dysphagia and dysphonia, quick pulse, noisy delirium and stupor.
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