Talk:Calabar Bean

When it says "is being studied for the treatment of..", is that in 2005 or part of the 1907 text?

Merged with Calabar bean

Here's the old text of this article: Calabar Bean is the seed of an African bean, employed in medicine, yielding Physostigmine. The calabar bean is a source of physostigmine, which relieves the symptoms of glaucoma. It is also being studied for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

The Calabar is also known as the Ordeal Bean. In traditional Nigerean trials, especially involving witchcraft, an accused would be forced to eat the bean - which is poisonous. If the accused survived they would be considered not guilty. If they died they were considered guilty and the death served as punishment.

One theory was that an innocent person would eat the beans much faster, believing they would survive the ordeal. Rapid ingestion of the beans produces an emetic effect. A rightly accused person would be fearful of eating the beans and would do so more slowly, allowing the toxic effects to build up and thus death.

Another fairly widely believed theory is that a guilty person would be more nervous and their stomach would thus excrete more acid. This would trigger more release of the poison, and this would be rapidly poisonous, rather than allowing vomitting.