Toxic Plants

Book cover, "The Old Vegetable Neurotics" It may seem odd to be reviewing a book which is over 150 years old, but let me explain the background to it.   For the last few years I have been trying to recreate the plant based anaesthetics used in ancient Greek and Roman times, medieval Europe, and more recently in World Wars 1 and 2, for a thought experiment: what would we do for anaesthetics if civilisation collapsed and global supply chains and the pharmaceutical industry no longer functioned? Recipes for making these anaesthetics must have existed in times past, but it is difficult to find them today, either because they have disintegrated through passage of time, or they were never written down because the practitioners who used them were illiterate, or they are written in medieval English or Latin and are hard to understand.   Opium poppies growing on Douglas Promenade, Isle of Man I am hoping that an ongoing research project, Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries   may ...

Small Belladonna plant This month we are returning to our core theme of toxic plants and we will be discussing one toxic plant in particular: Atropa belladonna , also known as Deadly Nightshade.   But first the usual legal warning:   THIS BLOG IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.   DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.   ANY OF IT.   EVER. Belladonna has a long history of use by humans both in medicine and in warfare.   It was used by the ancient Greeks to induce drowsiness and numbness before surgery.   It was used in larger doses by the ancient Romans as a biological weapon, for example on arrowheads, or for poisoning the enemy’s water supply.   The Roman emperors Claudius and Augustus are reputed to have been poisoned by it. Many toxic plants are therapeutic in small doses but toxic or fatal in large doses.   The medieval herbalists and “cunning folk” who used the plant therapeutically probably trod a fine line between being called healers if things went ...

White bryony flower In this series we are looking at plants which were used as anaesthetics in ancient Roman and medieval times and in wartime Britain.    In my last three posts in March, June and September, I described the progress of several such plants including henbane, jimsonweed/thornapple, white bryony/English mandrake, mediterranean/european mandrake, opium poppy, hemlock/poison hemlock, monkshood/wolfsbane and deadly nightshade.    It’s now December, the garden is dormant so let’s take a look at how one might use these plants in practice. First the usual warning: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.   These plants can be highly toxic or even fatal.   The purpose of this series is to imagine what we might have to do if we were thrown into some national emergency, the usual supply lines for the import of pharmaceuticals broke down, and we had to make do with whatever was at hand – just like people did in wartime Britain.   These are not recreational drugs an...

Foxglove In this series we are looking at plants which were used as anaesthetics in ancient Roman and medieval times and in wartime Britain.   In my last two posts in March and June, I described the progress of several such plants including henbane, jimsonweed / thornapple, white bryony / English mandrake, mediterranean / european mandrake, opium poppy, hemlock / poison hemlock, monkshood / wolfsbane and deadly nightshade.   It’s now September, so let’s take a look at how these plants have got on in the last three months. Henbane seed capsules Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) This annual plant has completed its life cycle by setting seed.   When the seed capsules dry out and turn brown they develop a ring of sharp spikes to deter predators, which makes harvesting the seeds rather painful at times!   The capsule is sealed with a cap; when the plant is ready to release its seeds the cap falls out and the seeds are scattered. These plants only grew to about a foot tall, their...