Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/133

 {| ! ! ! The vapor emitted by poisoned food has the ''colour of the throat of the peacock. . . . when the food is thrown into fire, it rises high in the air; the fire makes a craclking sound as when salt deflagrates ..... the smoke has the smell of a burnt corpse''. Poisoned drinks: butter milk and thin milk have a light blue to yellow line. The food is to be thrown into fire for testing. . . the flame becomes parti-coloured like the plume of a peacock. The tongue of the flame also becomes pointed; a crackling sound is emitted and ''the smell of a putrid corpse is perceived. ... Water, milk and other drinking liquids, when mixed with poison, have blue lines printed upon''.— "Chikitsá," Ch. xxiii, 29-30.
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 * style="padding-left:0.5em;"|When poisoned food is thrown into fire, it makes crackling sound and the flame issuing therefrom is tinted like the throat of the peacock.—"Kalpa," Ch. i, 27.
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The physician, as superintendent of the kitchen, well-versed in toxicology, is essentially an Indian institution. Cf. Susruta, Kalpa, Ch. I. 6-9

Müller has pointed out the parallelism as shown above. We have, however, added to it the diagnostic test of poisoned food as