Food poisoning / by Edwin Oakes Jordan.

  • Edwin O. Jordan
Date:
[1917]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Food poisoning / by Edwin Oakes Jordan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of these plant poisons. One familiar plant, the so- called poison-ivy, is not harmful for many people even when handled recklessly; it can be eaten with impunity by most domestic animals. The actual number of poisonous plants likely to be inadvertently eaten by human beings is not large. Chesnut1 has enumerated about thirty important poisonous plants occurring in the United States, and some of these are not known to be poisonous except for domestic animals.2 Many of the cases of reported poisoning in man belong to the class of exceedingly rare accidents and are without much significance in the present discussion. Such are the use of the leaves of the American false hellebore (Veratrum viride) in mistake for those of the marsh-marigold3, the use of the fruit pulp of the Kentucky coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioica) in mistake for that of the honey-locust4, the accidental employment of daffodil bulbs for food, and the confusion by children of the young shoots of the broad-leaf laurel (.Kalmia latifolia) with the wintergreen.5 One of the 1 U.S. Dept, of Agric., Div. of Botany, Bull. 20, 1898. 2 Among the plants that seem to be most commonly implicated in the poisoning of stock are the larkspur (Delphinium. U.S. Dept, of Agric., Bull. 365, September 8, 1916), the water hemlock (Cicuta macu- lata) and others of the same genus, the lupines (U.S. Dept, of Agric., Bull. 405, 1916), some of the laurels (Kalmia), and the Death Camas of Zygadenus (U.S. Dept, of Agric., Bull. 123, 1915). The famous loco- weed of the western United States (U.S. Dept, of Agric., Bull. 112, 1909) is less certainly to be held responsible for all the ills ascribed to it (H. T. Marshall, Johns Hopkins Hosp. Bull., XXV [1914], 234). 3 Chesnut, U.S. Dept, of Agric., Div. of Botany, Bull. 20, 1898, p. 17. 4 Ibid., p. 28. 5 Ibid., p. 45. The seeds of the castor-oil bean, which contain a very powerful poison (ricin) allied to the bacterial toxins, have been known to cause the death of children who ate the seeds given them to play with.
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