Toxic Plants

Wars can bring out the worst in human nature and result in indiscriminate violence, property destruction and large scale suffering, such as we are currently witnessing on our television screens night after night.   They can also foster great resilience and ingenuity in overcoming obstacles.   In this post I am going to look at how our wartime ancestors in Britain circumvented the German blockade of vital medicines during two world wars and re-learned how to gather or grow medicines at home.   And as part of this, I am going to grow some of these plants myself and record their progress throughout this year. At the start of the 20th century, many of Britain’s pharmaceuticals came from Germany, but during WWI and WWII, this source of supply was unavailable, and alternative sources from elsewhere in the British Empire could not be relied upon because of enemy blockades of shipping.   However, anaesthetics, painkillers and other essential drugs were needed in large quantities to treat both