Barbicane

“ Cultivated plains soon appear, where are united all the productions of the northern and tropical floras, terminating in prairies abounding with pineapples and yams, tobacco, rice, cotton-plants, and sugar-canes, which extend beyond reach of sight, flinging their riches broadcast with careless prodigality.
Barbicane appeared highly pleased on observing the progressive elevation of the land; and in answer to a question of J. T. Maston, replied:
"My worthy friend, we cannot do better than sink our Columbiad in these high grounds." ”

“ The amount of barium found in various species of loco plants will no doubt vary, and perhaps the pharmacological test on rabbits as the writer has used it may have to be modified for such plants, so that at present the wisest plan to test these plants is to determine their barium content and also make the physiological test, as has been proposed, and if the barium content runs low, say below 0.11 per cent of the ash, in plants yielding from 12 to 18 per cent of ash, then to increase the number of feedings on the rabbit. ”

“ Barbigerum has pseudo-bulbs less than an inch high, and its flowers are proportionate. But charm and size are no way akin. Fascination dwells in the lip, which, hanging upon the slenderest possible connection, lengthens out to the semblance of a brush. Thus exquisitely poised it rocks without ceasing, and its long, silky, purple-brown hairs wave softly but steadily all day long, as if on the back of a moving insect. Pretty though it be, all declare it uncanny.
The species was introduced from Sierra Leone by Messrs. ”

“ No doubt on ranges where a large number of loco plants are eaten, with little other food, plants with a very low barium content may be poisonous, but if large amounts of other food are fed the writer would expect few, if any, serious results.
As the writer’s work has been confined to the laboratory side of the loco-weed investigations no feeding experiments with barium salts have been made by him on large animals. Such experiments should, of course, be made under range conditions; that is, where the water and food supply is deficient. ”

“ The fact that treatment of the loco-weed extract with a few drops of sulphuric acid, which will remove the barium, renders these extracts harmless, and even apparently nutritious, would suggest the theoretical antidotal treatment to be with sulphates, in the form, perhaps, of epsom salts, but perhaps alkaline bicarbonates may be present in the stomach, either due to lessened acidity of the stomach or from drinking alkaline waters, in which case the precipitation of the barium by sulphates would presumably be interfered with, and thus the treatment be rendered ineffectual. ”

“ Now, stillness reigns on that momentous anniversary at the Barbican; no crackers spurt, no pyre burns, for the police are there in force on the evening to prevent a repetition of such an event as that which took place on the occasion we are about to record.
The broad quay, the proximity of the waters and the coal barges, the good open space before the houses, had impressed the youth for many generations that no place was fitter for the fiery celebration than the Barbican. There were bits of old timber to be had for the asking or for the taking. ”

“ The barberry is a sensitive plant, endowed apparently with something analogous to the nervous system of animals; for its blossoms offer a noted specimen of vegetable irritability, easily excited by the insertion of a pin—the stamens, if lightly touched at their base, springing forward and striking against the stigma, while the petals at the same time close over them. If the anthers be ripe, this movement causes them to discharge their pollen upon the stigma, and then, if touched again, no result is elicited ”

“ Certain chemical substances which are known to abolish or suspend the contractility of animal protoplasm have been found to affect in a corresponding manner the movements of barberry stamens. Thus nicotine, alcohol, and the mineral acids destroy all power of movement. A one-per-cent solution of morphine is similarly active, while curare, the powerful nerve poison which leaves the contractility of muscle unaffected, is found to exert no influence upon the stamens of Berberis. ”

“ Calculating this entirely in terms of Aragallus lamberti and allowing 10 per cent of moisture for these plants (Sayre) would make 27 kilos of dry loco [Pg 75] eaten by each animal per diem. In the analysis of the writer of one Aragallus lamberti from Hugo, Colo., it was found to yield 12.44 per cent of ash, and the barium content corresponded to 2.6 milligrams BaSO4 in each gram of the ash. This would correspond to 10.24 grams of barium acetate (Ba (C2H3O2) 2 + H2O) or 9.15 grams of barium chlorid (BaCl2 + 2H2O) per diem. ”

“ When boiled with sugar, however, it makes an agreeable preserve, rob, or jelly, according to the different modes of preparing it. Barberries are also used as a dry sweetmeat, and in sugarplums or comfits; are pickled with vinegar, and are used for the garnishing of dishes. They are likewise well calculated to allay heat and thirst in persons afflicted with fevers. The bark of this barberry shrub is said to have been administered with effect in cases of jaundice, and in some other complaints; and the inner bark, with the assistance of alum, dyes linen a fine yellow colour. ”

“ The Common Barberry is a spiny shrub, growing in hedge and copse, and brightening the spot from April to June with its strings of yellow flowers, and later in the year with its oblong red berries. Its shoots attain a height of from six to eight feet, and are clothed in a whitish bark, the wood being yellow. The flowers include eight or nine sepals and six petals: the outer sepals are very small and liable to be overlooked. The petals are in two series, and at the base of each petal are two honey-secreting glands, which induce the visits of honey-loving insects. ”

“ The muscles of the extremities were paralyzed and the animal died. “The post-mortem examination revealed œdema of the lungs, slight cloudiness of the heart muscles, numerous small hemorrhagic spots on the mucous membrane of the small intestine, and stagnation of the blood in the vessels of the small and large intestines. Similar symptoms and lesions were found in a lamb 4 months old which was given per os 6.0 grams of barium chlorid dissolved in 200 grams of distilled water.” ”

“ Hillebrand [182] has called attention to the fact that the igneous rocks of the Rocky Mountains showed a higher percentage of barium than rock from other portions of the United States, so that under these conditions one might expect the presence of barium in plants growing in this region. A sample of Aragallus lamberti and one of Astragalus mollissimus were sent to the Bureau of Chemistry for spectroscopic examination for various elements and they reported traces of barium in each. ”

“ But of all flowers that of the Barberry-bush, t., is most worthy the attention of a curious physiologist. In this the six stamens, spreading moderately, are sheltered under the concave tips of the petals, till some extraneous body, as the feet or trunk of an insect in search of honey, touches the inner part of each filament near the bottom. The irritability of that part is such, that the filament immediately contracts there, and consequently strikes its anther, full of pollen, against the stigma. ”

“ It opens up most important problems concerning the soils and the relation of the flora to them. It should be borne in mind that although barium is shown to be chiefly responsible for the poisonous properties of loco weeds in eastern Colorado, it is entirely possible that in other regions other substances may be equally or even more significant. ”

“ No actual experiments have yet been made with cattle by feeding small doses of the pure salt.
No doubt more of the pure barium salts will be required to produce symptoms of poisoning in animals than would be necessary in the case of the form of barium found in the plant, as in the loco-weed the barium is probably better protected from precipitation than are the barium salts when dissolved in water alone. ”

“ The practical importance of the discovery of the true nature of the active poisonous principle of the loco weeds is very great. It not only sheds light on the loco situation and enables one to explain many hitherto inexplicable things, but it also adds much to our knowledge of barium in its medical bearings. ”

“ Of the dried Astragalus nitidus (Woodland Park, Colo., October, 1907) which was reported by the Bureau of Chemistry as containing no barium, 200 grams were extracted with water and fed in 100-gram doses for two successive days. The animal increased steadily in weight and fifteen days after the first feeding had gained 99.2 grams. This amount of the plant was also extracted with water and the residue was then digested with pepsin and pancreatin in the thermostat, as in the previous case, and fed in two doses corresponding to 100 grams each. ”

“ When light is so easy to obtain, why go in search of scientific obscurity? Why talk of acid or alkaline reactions, which prove nothing, when it is so simple to have recourse to facts, which prove everything? Before declaring that the hunting insects' poison has preservative properties merely because of its acid qualities, it would have been well to enquire if the sting of a Bee, with its acid and its alkali, could not perchance produce the same effects as that of the paralyser, whose skill is categorically denied. ”

“ Acute cases of poisoning in man from four or more grams of barium carbonate or chlorid or nitrate have been reported more or less frequently. [214] In the acute case of poisoning in man reported by Tiraboschi and Taito, no macroscopic changes were noted in the stomach mucosa. [215] Lopes [216] has reported one case of acute poisoning in man from less than 1 gram of barium chlorid. In this case paralysis of the limbs was a marked feature. ”

“ Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith the manuscript of a technical bulletin entitled “Barium, a Cause of the Loco-Weed Disease,” prepared by Dr. A. C. Crawford, Pharmacologist, under the direction of Dr. Rodney H. True, Physiologist in Charge of Poisonous-Plant Investigations, and to recommend that it be published as Bulletin No. 129 of the series of this Bureau.
For many years the stockmen in many parts of the West have reported disastrous consequences following the eating of so-called loco weeds characteristic of the regions involved. ”

“ It makes excellent jelly, and is much used in the manufacture of sugar-plums. The roots and bark yield a yellow dye. Cattle and sheep eat the leaves, and the flowers are attractive to insects.
The barberry formerly grew wild, in great quantities, in our English hedgerows, but it has been extirpated from a belief that it injures the growth of corn. It is said that the leaves are frequently infested by a tiny fungus, similar to one which attacks wheat: this is easily dispersed by the wind, and propagatad amongst the corn, causing it much injury. ”

“ The Peruvian bark tree grows its own quinine, and administers it to itself, as it were, in order to prevent a disease in itself caused by the marshy places where it is found, similar to fever in the human subject. The willow grows beside rivers and streams which are apt to cause exhalations and breed influences that are noxious to the well-being of the tree. It has therefore developed in its own bark a febrifuge called salicin, which protects it from these noxious influences and maintains its trunk and branches and foliage in vigorous health and beauty. ”

“ The fact that the aqueous extract of 500 grams of the fresh Astragalus mollissimus, or of 200 grams (in some cases 100 grams) of the dried plant, when fed by mouth, would regularly kill a rabbit weighing about 907 grams, with certain definite clinical symptoms and pathological lesions, was at first arbitrarily selected as our test [Pg 47] to aid in the isolation of the active principle. Later the production of chronic symptoms by the aqueous extract or digestion of 200 grams of these dried plants given in doses of 100 grams each on two successive days was considered essential. ”

“ There is complete identity between the state into which she plunges her victims and that produced at will by injecting ammonia into the nerve centres of the thorax. Now, as it is impossible to attribute the perfect preservation of the insect during so long a time to the drop injected, one must altogether reject the notion of an antiseptic fluid, and grant that in spite of utter immobility the creature is not really dead. A spark of life exists, keeping the organs for some time in normal freshness, but dying out by degrees and leaving them at last subject to corruption. ”

“ The name Verbascum is an altered form of the Latin barbascum, from barba, "a beard," in allusion to the dense woolly hairs on both sides of the leaves; and the [361] appellation, Mullein, is got from the French molène, signifying the "scab" in cattle, and for curing which disease the plant is famous. It has also been termed Cow's Lung Wort, Hare's Beard, Jupiter's Staff, Ladies' Foxglove, and Velvet Dock from its large soft leaves. ”

“ Like the English haw, its fruit requires two years to vegetate.
The barberry, so very abundant in our vicinity, is supposed to be an introduced shrub. It corresponds exactly with the Berberis vulgaris of Europe. It has only a limited locality on the seaboard of New England, and is riot found anywhere else on this continent. The vigor of its growth is especially note-worthy. It rises by the way-side; it grows in the chinks and crevices of the rocks; it spreads over neglected pastures, and looks around with a saucy confidence that seems to say, "All the world was made for barberry bushes." ”

“ Evidently the barium in these dried plants had been converted into an insoluble form by drying or by some peculiarity of its metabolism, and was not extracted by water, but could be extracted by digesting the plants with the combined digestive ferments, pepsin and pancreatin. ”