TOXIC BOTANICALS LIBRARY
Toxic plants have been studied, cultivated, and deliberately kept for centuries — by physicians, poisoners, midwives, cunning folk, and anyone who understood that the line between medicine and poison was a matter of dose rather than intent. Many of the most dangerous plants in this archive are also the most pharmacologically significant, their alkaloids still present in modern medicine under different names. Their history belongs not only to the dangerous but to everyone who learned to work carefully with difficult things.
Bittersweet Nightshade: The Vine That Took Its Name From a Taste
One name calls it Judas's herb. Another calls it a symbol of marital fidelity. Both describe the same climbing vine, whose berries taste sweet enough to fool a curious child and dangerous enough to occasionally kill one.
“The dose makes the poison. The knowledge makes the difference.”
— After Paracelsus
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