LIMAERRA CEDRON: ITS WONDERFUL PROPERTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8986, 25 February 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIMAERRA CEDRON: ITS WONDERFUL PROPERTIES.

Ik a recent, issue of the proceedings of the Agri-Horticultural Society of Madras, a translation is given from a German publication of an account of the uses of the Cedron. It is written by Mr. J. P. Carrey, who gives the following interesting particulars —" During my journey in Panama, I observed in front or my tent a rattlesnake about 15 paces distant. It bit a bird sitting on a long branch, and before I could kill it, the bird was bit a second time. I counted fourteen rattles on the tail of the snake. The bird, a kind of bustard, recovered so far that it flew a distance of 25 paces, where it pecked at a shrub resembling the American quince, and then flewintotheairas if nothing had happened. Drawing the attention of one of my native servants to the occurrence, he looked at me with astonishment, laughing at my ignorance of this well-known remedy against the bites of poisonous snakes and insects. He said : We care as little for the bite of a rattle, moccasin, coppersnake, or tarantula as we do for that of a mosquito; the Cedron bean kills the poison in live minutes. We doubted his assertion, but on the following night he caught a large rattlesnake, and next morning, in front of the whole camp, he allowed himself to be bitten on the left hand, and then killed the snake. The punctures of the bite were as large as a pin's head, and goon assumed a purple inflammation, which spread over the whole hand. We offered the wounded man our help, but he declined, and pulled from his pocket a Cedron bean of the size of a chestnut. He gnawed at it, and spread the saliva over the wound. He then prepared a decoction of the scrapings of the bean and hot water, which he swallowed, and after half an hour all the external symptoms of the inflammation had disappeared. In two hours he was quite well again. Other experiments confirmed this experience. I took some beans with me to San Francisco, where Professor Langvert, at my request, made several experiments with the best success. It appears that the natives of Central America affirm that in no case of hydrophobia does a fatal termination occur, the remedy being an infusion of the Cedron bean. Even dogs have been observed gnawing at the bean. This bean is fully described in Hooker's Journal of Botany. *