Roggewein, (Voyage for the Discovery of Southern Lands) speaking of Batavia, observes, that, at this place, there are some of the Macassars, so famous for their little poisoned arrows, which they blow through a trunk. This poison is the juice of a tree, that grows in Macassar, and in the Bougie islands. They dip the points of their arrows in this juice, and then let them dry. The wound they give is mortal.
The natives of Ceylon are very dexterous with the bow and arrow; so also are the Hottentots, according to Kolben, in his Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. A Hottentot arrow consists of a small tapering stick or cane, of about a foot and a half in length, pointed with a small thin piece of iron bearded, and joined to the stick or cane by a barrel. Their bows are made of olive, or iron wood, and the strings, of the sinews and entrails of beasts. When they attack a lion, tiger, or leopard, which they do with wonderful resolution and dexterity, they employ slings (hassagayes) and arrows, which for that purpose are usually poisoned.
Ellis (Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage) speaks of the bows and arrows of the Eskimaux Indians, and the facility with which they use them, but not of poisoned arrows. Moore, (Travels into the interior of Africa) observes, that a native took him to his house, and showed him a great number of arrows, daubed over with a black mixture, said to be so venomous, that, if the arrow did but draw blood, it would be mortal, unless the person who made the mixture had a mind to cure it. For the man observed to him, that there were no poisonous herbs, whose effects might not be prevented by the application of other herbs.
Poisoned arrows, according to various historians, were used in the remotest periods of antiquity. The mode of treating wounds in the twelfth century, by using membrane like the present gold-beaters' skin, may be mentioned in relation to this circumstance. The Emperor, John Commenus, accidentally wounded himself in the hand with a poisoned arrow, while hunting, and applied a piece of skin to the wound. The emperor, however, died in consequence of the wound, after it had become inflamed under the pellicle; which, in large wounds, and when the skin is suffered to remain too long, is commonly the case, though the poison alone we are informed, would have been a sufficient cause of death. Other instances are also mentioned of death being occasioned by the poisoned arrow.
On the subject of poisoned arrows, the following outline is given on the authority of the author of the Dictionnaire de l'Industrie, vol. 3, p. 50.
The juice of the Mancenilier, or the Lianes des Marais, called in Guyanne Curare, is employed by some savages. The Arabs use the juice of a milky shrub, which they name chark, and called by the Persians gulbut samour. Indian arrows are said to be poisoned with the venom of serpents. The islanders of Java rub their darts with the blood and venom of the lizard Gecko, which they kill by whipping it to death. The needles of the Macassars, they poison with the juice of a tree, which is said to belong to the ahouai of America. At Ceylon they extract the venomous matter from the Nerium, or laurel rose. The ancient Gauls are said by M. Paw to have poisoned their arms with the juice of the Caprisiguier. In some cantons of the Pyrenees and Alps, they express the juice of the roots of the Aconitum, (thora), which they put on weapons.
M. Charles Coquebert, in a memoir read to the Philomatic Society, in 1798, observes, that the ancient European inhabitants employed three plants to poison their arrows; namely, Veratrum album, Helleborus viridis, and Aconitum Lysocitonum.
There have been obtained from the Society Islands some poisoned arrows, and a pot of the composition, in which they are dipped. It has the appearance of a black fluid extract, and seems to be an infusion or decoction of some plants, probably mixed with other substances.
With respect to the poisons obtained from the animal kingdom, they are principally liquid juices. Fontana, in particular, has paid attention to this subject. The poison of the viper, which is contained in two small vesicles of the mouth, when the animal bites, is forced, through the fangs, into the wound. If the vesicles be extracted, or the liquor prevented from flowing into the wound, the bite is harmless. Sharp instruments, as arrows, when they penetrate the skin, being covered with the poison, will have the same effect. Fontana made a set of experiments on the dry poison of the viper, and a similar set on gum arabic, and obtained the same results! Small birds and quadrupeds die immediately, when they are bitten by a viper; but to a man, the bite is not always fatal. The experiments and observations of Francini, (Abridg. Phil. Trans. ii, 8,) Mead, (On Poisons, p. 35,) Tyson, (Phil. Trans. vol. xii,) Fontana, Redi, Russel, the late Dr. Ramsay, of Charleston, (Phil. Mag. xvii, 125,) and Dr. B. S. Barton, (Amer. Phil. Trans. vol. ii, p. 100,) furnish an abundance of facts on the venom of the viper, and some on the antidotes to the bite. Dr. F. G. Gren, late professor at Halle, in Saxony, (Principles of Modern Chemistry, ii, p. 47), observes, in speaking of the experiments of Fontana, as the poison of the viper exhibits all the characteristic properties of gum, whether the gum be merely the vehicle of a peculiar venomous substance, which, upon investigation, escapes the notice of the senses? or whether this action upon living bodies, so different from its usual nature, be imparted to the gum, merely by a change in the proportions of its radicals, so slight as to be unobservable in its chemical analysis?