The poison in the Amanita Phalloides, the death-cup, is phallin. Phallin is a toxalbumin, and boiling fortunately makes it less dangerous. Phallin kills, not by causing collapse, but by destroying the red blood-corpuscles, setting free the haemoglobin. Poisoning sets in after from twelve to fifteen hours. The patient acts like one in the collapse of cholera, but death comes not from heart paralysis, as in poisoning from the Fly Amanita, but from the blood breaking down, causing exhaustion. Evacuate the stomach and treat on general principles. Be sure and use injections of normal salt solution into the veins or tissues. There is no known antidote to phallin. It is supposed to arrest the heart's action in diastole. The proper treatment is to evacuate the stomach by the usual methods, even washing it out with large quantities of aseptic warm water. Digitalis is probably antagonistic to muscarin. Give twenty drops of tincture of digitalis hypodermically, and then digitalis, whiskey, ammonia, and such remedies as the case may require. In digitalis poisoning the heart is usually arrested in systole.

Mushrooms are so frequently eaten that it does not seem out of place here to speak at the length I have concerning them. The emergency often comes quickly and unexpectedly, and it is well to have everything pertaining to treatment at the wit's end not only of the physician, but of the layman.

Farlow's rules, for beginners especially, in gathering mushrooms are as follows:

1. Avoid fungi in the button state, and in the decayed state, even if the decay is only slight.

2. Avoid all fungi which have stalks with a swollen base surrounded by a sac-like or scaly envelope, especially if the gills are white.

3. Avoid fungi having a milky juice, unless the milk is reddish.

4. Avoid fungi in which the umbrella, or pileus, is thin in proportion to the gills, and in which the gills are nearly all of equal length, especially if the umbrella is bright colored.

5. Avoid all tube-bearing fungi in which the flesh changes color when cut or broken or where the mouths of the tubes are reddish, and in the case of other tube-bearing fungi experiment with caution.

6. Fungi which have a sort of spider-web or flocculent ring around the upper part of the stalk should in general be avoided.

Rules 1, 2, and 5 may for the beginner be regarded as absolute, with the exception to Rule 2 of Amanita Casarea, the gills of which are yellow. Rules 3, 4, and 6 have more numerous exceptions, but these rules should be followed in all cases unless the collector is content to experiment first with very small quantities, and learn the practical results.

As to mushrooms, they have been supposed to be highly nitrogenous, and hence strong food. I have seen this recently denied and they were put down as wishy-washy diet. Looking at the analysis, probably their flavor, which is delicious to those who have learned to eat them, is their great recommendation.

Analysis

Water, 88.1; proteids, 3.5; fat, .4; grape sugar mannite, 1.05; carbohydrates, 6.8; ash, 1.2. Fuel value per pound, 1.2. Fresh Truffles. - Water, 72.8; non-nitrogenous substances, 8.91; fat, .62; other non-nitrogenous substances, 7.54; woody fibre, 7.92; ash, 2.21. Fresh Common Morel. - Water, 90; non-nitrogenous matter, 3.48; fat, .24; grape sugar mannite, .72; other non-nitrogenous substances, 3.95; woody fibre, .67; ash, .94.

This is not a strong showing, and does not make them the highly nitrogenous diet we have been taught that they are. Remember, though, in cooking most of the bulk goes off in water, and what remains is quite concentrated.

There is something unexplained attached to mushrooms. In Italy the common mushroom, Agaricus Campestris, is not only rejected as an edible variety, but it is feared as poisonous. The climate, soil, and environment must make a difference surely. The mushroom for spontaneous reproduction probably depends on animals, especially the horse and the horned cattle. The mycelia are taken in with the grass they eat, then passed through during digestion, and come forth in the manure of the animal. Animal droppings are the proper material in which to sprinkle the mycelia when artificial cultivation is to be carried on. They grow in caves, in casks, or in benches placed in flower or vegetable forcing-houses, or in cellars. Some grow them in the cellars of dwelling houses, where the heating apparatus of the house is utilized to give proper heat for developing the mushrooms from the spores. This is a very dangerous custom, as many pathogenic germs may be cultivated at the same time, and that much-dreaded germ of tetanus or lockjaw, the bacillus tetani, is especially at home in stable droppings.

Mushroom spawn or spores come in so-called bricks, from their shape and resemblance to common bricks, and can be purchased from the general seed dealers. This is really the proper way to get mushrooms. Raise or buy the cultivated ones. You always then get the common mushroom, a perfectly safe one, and the best of all, taking all things into consideration, and you do not depend on the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who gather the wild ones and hawk them from door to door, and who know nothing whatever about discriminate selection.