_Bish_, _Bis_ or _Bikh_, _Indian Aconite Root_, _Nepal Aconite_.
=Botanical Origin=—The poisonous root known in India as _Bish_, _Bis_,
or _Bikh_[48] is chiefly derived from _Aconitum ferox_ Wallich, a plant
growing 3 to 6 feet high and bearing large, dull-blue flowers, native
of the temperate and sub-alpine regions of the Himalaya at an elevation
of 10,000 to 14,000 feet in Garhwal, Kumaon, Nepal and Sikkim.[49] In
the greater part of these districts, other closely allied and equally
poisonous species occur, viz. _A. uncinatum_ L., _A. luridum_, H.
f. et Th., _A. palmatum_ Don, and also abundantly _A. Napellus_ L.,
which last, as already mentioned, grows throughout Europe as well as
in Northern Asia and America. The roots of these plants are collected
indiscriminately according to Hooker and Thomson[50] under the name of
_Bish_ or _Bikh_.
=History=—The Sanskrit name of this potent drug, _Visha_, signifies
simply _poison_, and _Ativisha_, a name which it also bears, is
equivalent to “_summum venenum_.” _Bish_ is mentioned by the Persian
physician Alhervi[51] in the 10th century as well as by Avicenna[52]
and many other Arabian writers on medicine,—one of whom, Isa Ben Ali,
calls it the most rapid of deadly poisons, and describes the symptoms
it produces with tolerable correctness.[53]
Upon the extinction of the Arabian school of medicine this virulent
drug seems to have fallen into oblivion. It is just named by Acosta
(1578) as one of the ingredients of a pill which the Brahmin physicians
give in fever and dysentery.[54] There is also a very strange reference
to it as “_Bisch_” in the Persian Pharmacopœia of Father Ange, where
it is stated[55] that the root, though most poisonous when fresh, is
perfectly innocuous when dried, and that it is imported into Persia
from India, and _mixed with food and condiments as a restorative_! Ange
was aware that it was the root of an aconite.
[48] The Arabic name _Bish_ or Persian _Bis_ is stated by Moodeen
Sheriff in his _Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India_ (p. 265) to be
a more correct designation than _Bikh_, which seems to be a corruption
of doubtful origin. We find that the Arabian writer Ibn Baytar gives
the word as _Bish_ (not _Bikh_).
[49] Figured in Bentley and Trimen, _Med. Plants_ (1877) pt. 27.
[50] _Flor. Ind._ i. (1855) 54, 57; and Introd. Essay, 3.
[51] Abu Mansur Mowafik ben Ali Alherui, _Liber Fundamentorum
Pharmacologiæ_, i. (Vindob. 1830) 47. Seligmann’s edition.
[52] Valgrisi edition, 1564, lib. ii. tract. 2. it. N. (p. 347).
[53] Ibn Baytar, Sontheimers transl. i. (1840) 199.
[54] Clusius, _Exotica_, 289.
[55] _Pharm. Persica_, 1681, p. 17, 319, 358. The word _bisch_ is
correctly given in Arabic characters, so that of its identity there can
be no dispute. (_Pharm. persica_, see appendix: Angelus.)
The poisonous properties of _Bish_ were particularly noticed by
Hamilton (late Buchanan)[56] who passed several months in Nepal in
1802-3: but nothing was known of the plant until it was gathered by
Wallich and a description of it as _A. ferox_ communicated by Seringe
to the Société de physique de Genève in 1822.[57] Wallich himself
afterwards gave a lengthened account of it in his _Plantæ Asiaticæ
Rariores_ (1830).[58]
=Description=—Balfour, who also figures _A. ferox_,[59] describes
the plant from a specimen that flowered in the Botanical Garden of
Edinburgh as—“having 2—3 fasciculated, fusiform, attenuated tubers,
some of the recent ones being nearly 5 inches long, and 1½ inches in
circumference, dark brown externally, white within, sending off sparse,
longish branching fibres.”
Aconite root has of late been imported into London from India in
considerable quantity, and been offered by the wholesale druggists
as _Nepal Aconite_.[60] It is of very uniform appearance, and seems
derived from a single species, which we suppose to be _A. ferox_. The
drug consists of simple tuberous roots of an elongated conical form, 3
to 4 inches long, and ½ to 1¾ inches in greatest diameter. Very often
the roots have been broken in being dug up and are wanting in the
lower extremity: some are nearly as broad at one end as at the other.
They are mostly flattened and not quite cylindrical, often arched,
much shrivelled chiefly in a longitudinal direction, and marked rather
sparsely with the scars of rootlets. The aerial stem has been closely
cut away, and is represented only by a few short scaly rudiments.[61]
The roots are of a blackish brown, the prominent portions being
often whitened by friction. In their normal state they are white and
farinaceous within, but as they are dried by fire-heat and often even
scorched, their interior is generally horny, translucent, and extremely
compact and hard. The largest root we have met with weighed 555 grains.
In the Indian Bazaars, _Bish_ is found in another form, the tuberous
roots having been steeped in cow’s urine to preserve them from
insects.[62] These roots which in our specimen[63] are mostly plump and
cylindrical, are flexible and moist when fresh, but become hard and
brittle by keeping. They are externally of very dark colour, black and
horny within, with an offensive odour resembling that of hyraceum or
castor. Immersed in water, though only for a few moments, they afford a
deep brown solution. Such a drug is wholly unfit for use in medicine,
though not unsuitable, perhaps, for the poisoning of wild beasts, a
purpose to which it is often applied in India.[64]
[56] _Account of the Kingdom of Nepal_, Edin. 1819, 98.
[57] _Musée Helvétique d’Hist. Nat._ Berne, i. (1823) 160.
[58] Yet strange to say confused the plant with _A. Napellus_, an
Indian form of which he figured as _A. ferox_!
[59] _Edinb. New Phil Journ._ xlvii. (1849) 366, pl. 5.
[60] The first importation was in 1869, when ten bags containing 1,000
lbs., said to be part of a much larger quantity actually in London,
were offered for sale by a drug-broker.
[61] There is a rude woodcut of the root in _Pharm. Journ._ i. (1871)
434.
[62] A specimen of ordinary _Bish_ in my possession for two or three
years became much infested by a minute and active insect of the genus
_Psocus_.—D. H.
[63] Obligingly sent to me in 1867 by Messrs. Rogers & Co. of Bombay,
who say it is the only kind there procurable.—D. H.
[64] According to Moodeen Sheriff (_Supplement to Pharm. of India_, pp.
25-32, 265) there are several kinds of aconite root found in the Indian
bazaars, some of them highly poisonous, others innocuous. The first or
poisonous aconites he groups under the head _Aconitum ferox_, while the
second, of which there are three varieties mostly known by the Arabic
name _Jadvár_ (Persian _Zadvár_), he refers to undetermined species of
_Aconitum_.
The surest and safest names in most parts of India for the poisonous
aconite roots are _Bish_ (Arabic); _Bis_ (Persian); _Singyā-bis_,
_Mīthā-zahar_, _Bachhnāg_ (Hindustani); _Vasha-nāvi_ (Tamil);
_Vasa-nābhi_ (Malyalim).
=Microscopic Structure=—Most of the roots fail to display any
characteristic structure by reason of the heat to which they have
been subjected. A living root sent to us from the Botanical Garden of
Edinburgh exhibited the thin brownish layer which encloses the central
part in _A. Napellus_, replaced by a zone of stone-cells,—a feature
discernible in the imported root.
=Chemical Composition=—According to Wright and Luff (see previous
article) the roots of _Aconitum ferox_ contain comparatively large
quantities of pseudaconitine with a little aconitine and an alkaloid,
apparently non-crystalline, which would appear not to agree with the
analogous body from _A. Napellus_.
=Uses=—The drug has been imported and used as a source of aconitine. It
is commonly believed to be much more potent than the aconite root of
Europe.