Toxic Plants

Deadly Nightshade berry harvest You will remember that in Part 1 of this series we looked at the general properties of herbs which could potentially be used as anaesthetics, and in Part 2 we looked at how to grow and preserve some of these herbs.  The herbs of particular interest are Henbane, Wolfsbane (aka Monkshood), Belladonna (aka Deadly Nightshade) and Jimsonweed (aka Thornapple).  Now in Part 3, we are going to take the first steps into making them into useable medicinal preparations. This is still a work in progress.  I haven't been able to produce a working herbal anaesthetic yet, but I'm happy to tell you where I've got to so far, and where I'm planning to go next. My current problem is finding or working out a recipe.  These would have been known to Roman physicians and medieval monks, village healers and “cunning-folk”, but they were probably mostly passed down orally from mother to daughter or master to apprentice.  If they were written down, the man...

Following on from my last post in June, we are going to look at how the toxic plants are getting along which I’ve been growing all year and which are going to form the ingredients for our Witches’ Flying Ointment which we will be making in the next episode in December.   Belladonna flower in August, with thistledown Deadly Nightshade (Belladonna atropica) Active ingredients: Tropane alkaloids such as hyoscyamine, atropine and scopolamine Desired effects: Nerve blocking effects including numbness and paralysis, sedation, drying up of secretions such as mucus or saliva, altered states of consciousness Undesired effects: Hallucinations; death due to respiratory muscle paralysis and/or cardiac arrhythmias (Deadly Nightshade does what it says on the tin). Despite its fearsome reputation as one of the most toxic plants in the UK, Belladonna is surprisingly delicate and hard to cultivate, particularly in cool, wet and windy climates like the Isle of Man.   It is particularly vulnera...

Deadly Nightshade plants growing in car tyres USUAL WARNING: DO NOT TRY ANY OF THIS UNLESS YOU ARE A DOCTOR.   AND PREFERABLY NOT EVEN THEN. As you may remember, this blog is about discovering (or rediscovering) plant based anaesthetics.   I am going to spend the remaining blog posts this year looking at how to prepare “witches’ flying ointment”.   In today’s post (June) we will look at what witches’ flying ointment was, or was believed to be.  In the next post (September) we will look at how to grow and preserve the plants which form its active ingredients, and in the final post (December) we will look at how to make the ointment itself.   Some medieval Church authorities believed that witches’ flying ointment was a magical ointment which allowed witches to fly on broomsticks to sabbaths (gatherings) and consort with the Devil.   Some modern historians believe that it was a hallucinogenic ointment which so-called witches applied to themselves and which gav...