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IX.—Description of the Plant which produces the Ordeal Bean of Calabar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

John Hutton Balfour
Affiliation:
Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Edinburgh.

Extract

It has been long known that in various parts of Africa, the natives are in the habit of subjecting to the ordeal of poison parties who are suspected of crimes. On the east coast, we meet with Tanghinia venenata, yielding the Tanghin poison-nut of Madagascar; and on the west coast, seeds and barks of different kinds have been employed as ordeals,—the sources of which, however, have not been hitherto fully ascertained.

Dr Kirk, naturalist to the Livingstone Expedition, states, that the Manganja tribe, in the south-east of Africa, believe in a God, and in medicine, or the ordeal which he directs as the means of discovering crime. If the ordeal causes vomiting, it shows innocence; if it acts by the bowels, crime, and the person is put to death. But the doctors have a good knowledge of which to give, for there are different plants used.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1861

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References

page 311 note * For an account of the stem, wood, and bark, I am indebted to notes furnished by the Rev. W. C. Thomson of Old Calabar.

page 312 note * Mr Thomson, in a letter to Mr Murray, describes this process in the recent flower as ‘resembling an admiral's hat set in a jaunty manner.’