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A Pharmaco-Bacteriologic Study of African Poisoned Arrows

1927; Oxford University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/infdis/41.1.51

1537-6613

Ivan C. Hall, R. W. Whitehead,

Diphtheria, Corynebacterium, and Tetanus

Ledantec in 1890 pointed out that tetanus frequently occurred after arrow wounds in the New Hebrides, and succeeded in reproducing tetanus in guineapigs by direct inoculation of the arrow poison. In 1892 he found that certain animals died with the symptoms of septic gangrene after inoculation with certain lots of arrow poison from the New Hebrides or cultures therefrom which resembled the Vibrion septique of Pasteur. He ascribed these germs to contamination of the arrows with soil from marshes.' In spite of this propitious beginning there is relatively little known as to the bacteriology of arrow poisons or arrow wounds. Parke 2 suspected tetanus in some of his men who died following arrow wounds, but as the result of a study of the plants used in the preparation of arrows by the pygmies of Central Africa, in collaboration with Holmes,' the tetanic symptoms were finally ascribed to strychnine from a species of Strychnos, and when Lewin' wrote his now classical dissertation upon arrow poisons, the possibility of their effects being due to, or complicated by, bacterial infections was practically ignored. There have been, however, a few contributions since Lewin's thesis which suggest the importance of this view point. Thus Mines 5 said in discussing the Munchi arrow poison, It is said that some tribes attempt to make their weapons still more deadly by placing the poisoned arrow heads in the flesh of putrefying corpses. They thus become carriers of bacterial infection. In this connection it is of interest to note that the extracts of the Munchi arrow poison acquired a putrefactive odour within a week, unless they were boiled, in which case they often remained unaltered for over a month. Parsons ' also recorded a similar observation in Northern Nigeria, decomposing animal secretions and carcasses serving as a sort of pincushion for infecting the arrows. Further, where the tetanus bacillus abounds arrows are rendered poisonous by merely planting them head downwards in the soil. No surgically clean arrow ever leaves the bow string, so that sepsis has to be guarded against in any case. This writer emphasized the treating of all arrow wounds as infected wounds and listed ten cases of men wounded with arrows, of whom five died in one-half to one and one-half hours, and five died in thirty hours to eight days, as follows: thirty hours,