auces, and breast; and that the ends of the
fingers with which it had been held became for a time benumbed; that
even a single grain in a crumb of bread taken internally produced a
burning heat and pain in the stomach and bowels, urgent strangury,
tenesmus, colic pais, cephalalgia, hiccup, &c. From this relation, it
will not appear surprising that we find several instances recorded, in
which the Colchicumproved a fatal poison both to man, and brute animals.
Two boys, after eating this plant, which they found growing in a meadow,
died in great agony. Violent symptoms have been produced by taking the
flowers. The seeds, likewise, have been known to produce similar
effects.

626. OENANTHE crocata. HEMLOCK. WATER DROPWORT.--Eleven French prisoners
had the liberty of walking in and about the town of Pembroke; three of
them being in the fields a little before noon, found and dug up a large
quantity of this plant with its roots, which they took to be wild
celery, to eat with their bread and butter for dinner. After washing it
a while in the fields they all three ate, or rather tasted of the roots.

As they were entering the town, without any previous notice of sickness
at the stomach or disorder in the head, one of them was seized with
convulsions. The other two ran home, and sent a surgeon to him. The
surgeon first endeavoured to bleed, and then to vomit him; but those
endeavours were fruitless, and the soldier died in a very short time.

Ignorant yet of the cause of their comrade's death, and of their own
danger, they gave of these roots to the other eight prisoners, who all
ate some of them with their dinner: the quantity could not be
ascertained. A few minutes after, the remaining two who gathered the
plant were seized in the same manner as the first; of which one died:
the other was bled, and a vomit forced down, on account of his jaws
being as it were locked together. This operated, and he recovered; but
he was for some time affected with a giddiness in his head; and it is
remarkable, that he was neither sick nor in the least disordered in his
stomach. The others being bled and vomited immediately, were secured
from the approach of any bad symptoms. Upon examination of the plant
which the French prisoners mistook for wild celery, Mr. Howell discovered
it to be this plant, which grows very plentifully in the neighbourhood
of Haverfordwest.

Although the above account, which Mr. Wilmer has so minutely described,
se