Also 8–9 woorara, 9 woorrara, wooraly. See also OORALI, URALI, URARI. [See CURARE.] A South American climbing plant, Strychnos toxifera, from the root of which one of the ingredients of the poison CURARE is obtained; also, the poison itself. Also attrib., as woorali poison, vine.
[1596. L. Keymis, Relat. Second Voy. Guiana, G 2. Names of poysoned hearbes. Ourari.]
1769. E. Bancroft, Ess. Nat. Hist. Guiana, 101. The Woorara, which is the principal ingredient in the composition of the fatal Indian arrow poison of that name.
1796. Stedman, Surinam, I. xv. 395. A few of the above arrows are frequently dipped in the woorara poison, which is instantaneously fatal.
1803. T. Winterbottom, Sierra Leone, I. xv. 271. A kind of dart,… dipped in a poison called woorrara.
1825. Waterton, Wand. S. Amer., 53. A vine grows in these wilds, which is called wourali. Ibid. The wourali poison destroys life’s action so gently, that the victim appears to be in no pain whatever. Ibid., 54. He scrapes the wourali vine and bitter root into thin shavings.
1842. Penny Cycl., XXIII. 152/2. Wooraly, Urari, or Poison-plant of Guiana.
1862. N. Syd. Soc. Year-bk. Med., 18. Nervous sensibility, after its suspension by woorara poisoning.
1902. P. Fountain, Mts. & Forests S. Amer., vii. 185. My mixture, after being slowly boiled between seven and eight hours, was, like the true wourali, innocuous if swallowed. Ibid., 189. I have, therefore, strong grounds for believing that it is snake-poison that is the active principle in the wourali paste.
