Abstract
The investigation of the toxic properties of this poison was undertaken at the request of Professor Ray Lankester, to whom it was sent by Dr. David Alexander of the West African Medical staff Corps in September, 1904. Dr. Alexander obtained the poison from a medicine house at Ghasi, a pagan town on the Gongola River, a tributary of the Benue, in Northern Nigeria. He states that when fresh it is a semi-fluid, black, sticky substance, that it is smeared on sticks, and that when it is required for re-dipping the arrows it is scraped off and heated. It appears to be composed of, or at all events to contain, the juice of a variety of Fig, and it is states that he saw a native shot in the abdomen with a poisoned arrow, and that death resulted apparently from heart failure in about 25 minutes.