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THORN-APPLE. The seeds and leaves of the thorn-apple received into the human stomach produce first a vertigo, and afterwards madness. If the quantity is large, and vomiting is not occasioned, it will undoubtedly prove fatal.
"Apple of Death" is what the Jungle call thorn-apple or dhatura, the readiest poison in all India. "What now?" said the panther. "Must thou and I kill each other for yonder red-eyed slayer?" "Can it speak?" said Mowgli in a whisper. "Did I do it a wrong when I threw it away? Between us two it can do no wrong, for we do not desire what men desire.
"But they came and went like shadows, Those blessed dreams of youth," I was a strange child, I know. Everybody told me so, and I knew it well enough without being told. The wise old men at Rice Corner, and their still wiser old wives, looked at me askance, as 'neath the thorn-apple tree I built my playhouse and baked my little loaves of mud bread.
"What has happened?" cried the confounded Szilard. "There must be a traitor among them, sir, a hireling of Fatia Negra; he has his hirelings everywhere, in forests, in palaces, in dungeons, in barracks, everywhere. And this traitor has mingled thorn-apple juice in the drink of his comrades and they will now sleep on for a night and a day.
He took up the book, looked at its title, smiled a little scornfully, was it? at me, and said of her who wrote the book, "She is sensible; she bears the result of her own theories before imposing their practice upon others; but," and he went back to the thorn-apple voice, "do you expect to take care of my sister by the aid of this to-night?" "It may give me assistance." "It will not.
The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple.
There were other open spaces covered with a vegetation almost as interesting as the canes and the trees: this was where what were called "weeds" were allowed to flourish. Here were the thorn-apple, chenopodium, sow-thistle, wild mustard, redweed, viper's bugloss, and others, both native and introduced, in dense thickets five or six feet high.
I afterwards found that the Indian had been drinking a powerful narcotic, prepared from the thorn-apple, and which is called huacacachu, or grave-plant, from the power it is supposed to possess of enabling those who drink it to see the inhabitants of the graves.
Boerhaave informs us, that some boys eating some seeds of the thorn-apple which were thrown out of a garden, were seized with giddiness, horrible imaginations, terrors, and delirium. Those that did not soon vomit, died. HYOSCYAMUS niger. HENBANE. Henbane is a very dangerous poison. The seeds, leaves, and root, received into the human stomach, are all poisonous.
Smooth varieties are seldom absolutely so, and if scattering hairs are found on the leaves or only on some more or less concealed parts, they correspond in their character to those of the species. So it is with prickles, and even the thornless thorn-apple has fruits with surfaces far from smooth.
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