Argemone oil, sanguinarine, and epidemic-dropsy glaucoma.

Argemone mexicana Linn. (Linnaeus, 1753; Tournefort, 1694), is a herb of the Papaveraceae (poppy family) indigenous to the West Indies (Fig. 1). The study of this herb and its active principles is important, first to circumvent the serious epidemics of dropsy and glaucoma resulting from the unintentional ingestion of its seed oil in tropical countries; secondly to find a method of producing in _ laboratoryanimals conditions similar to, if not identical with, glaucoma; and thirdly to examine the possibility that other simiilar pla-nts, by indirect ingestion, may play an insidious role in the causation of primary endemic