Food Poisoning

nk the hemlock," and how crafty imperial murderers were likely to substitute poisonous mushrooms for edible ones in the dishes prepared for guests who were out of favor. In our own times the eating of poisonous plants is generally an accident, and poisoning from this cause occurs chiefly among the young and the ignorant. According to Chesnut1 there are 16,673 leaf-bearing plants included in Heller's Catalogue of North American Plants, and of these nearly five hundred, in one way or another, have been alleged to be poisonous. Some of these are relatively rare or for other reasons are not likely to be eaten by man or beast; others contain a poison only in some particular part, or are poisonous only at certain seasons of the year; in some the poison is not dangerous when taken by the mouth, but only when brought in contact with the skin or injected beneath the skin or into the circulation. There are great differences in individual susceptibility to someof 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. 1 Science, XV (1902), 1016. 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... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.