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produced by the Emory University School of Medicine, accredited

by the American Medical Association for continuing medical education.

Right, I always like to start this talk by

reminding members of the audience the importance of plants have

had for the medical profession. Over is a I

guess I can say eons. What do you think

We have to know so much now? But our

forefathers had to know just as much on it was

different subjects. And botany was one of the things

If you go to from the historic sites of

this nature, you'll find Herb Gardens out behind the

doctor's house, where he had to raise his own

drugs. Uhh! We are an awful lot of

plants and the poisonous plants. And let's just think

don't have cardiologists in front of me and they

use digital Alice. Use morphine. Of course,

there was a book published this year written by a

pathologist who did a lot of research, and he

found Treatise written by a Roman Army officer back in

the first century BC who, uh, describes a

plant, the juice of which starched bleeding and cured

cough. And the name of this plant was a

fed drawn nearly 2000 years later, in the early

19 twenties, an American doctor working in the Peking

Union Medical College tested 2000 Chinese herbs, and he

found one that was good for asthma, and the

name of that was ephedrine. Somebody overlooked the fact

that in 18, 80 ephedrine had been purified and

given up as a drug because it poisoned all the

dogs and the strong, purified uh, solutions that

were then used. And curiously enough, in the

late 19 twenties, the stimulus for synthesizing amphetamines was

the fact that they were beginning to run out of

the plant that produces a federal and so that stimulated

synthetic chemistry. Actually, aspirin or salicylic acid was

one of the first synthetic drugs, and I will

quote now from the Scientific American. 18 June 18

76 salicylic acid. Since its introduction into the material

America has been extensively employed as an antiseptic in

a February Fuge. Its exact value in both of

these offices is still sub judice key. Over the

past few months, surprising results have been claimed for

it in the treatment of acute rheumatism. But up

until then we were dependent on plants pretty much a

lot of what we know about the nervous system.

Of course, here comes from experiments with poisons like

Ferrari and atropine and cocaine, all of which your

plant their vision. And I make this point because

not many poisonings when we get into that due to

plants, have specific pharmacologic antidotes. If you do

so, if you ever confronted with it, try

to remember your basic pharmacology and the effects of various

drugs that you've learned on various systems of the body

and at least give you a good clue as to

how you might treat the patient. I like history

and let's go on and get started then, uh

with another reference to the first case of plant

poisoning which occurred in the Garden of Eden. And

I'll come forward from that to a few 1000 years

I suppose, uh could have the next slide

I'll pick this one up just lately. The

caption. If you can't see it says, Bring

that cup off the stand. It's hemlock for Socrates

Hey, I'm cheating a little bit now.

This really isn't the hemlock planets, water parsnip,

but the general structure is the same. Speaking of

this plant on the hemlock if you could look closely

there would be spots on the stems. It

occurs in marshy grounds, and in this country people

have been poisoned by it when gathering watercress in marshes

And they would inadvertently pick on some of the

stems or leaves and would get in the crop and

be included in the salad. And persons would suffer

that. The hemlock you'll hear most about in Georgia

of course, is the eastern hemlock tree,

which is not a poisonous plant. Just happens to

have the same Uhh name. And actually, tea

brewed from the leaves of this, uh, tree

are used as a dinner drink by Indians and Woodsman

and so forth, and it's well known not to

be poisonous. We've just celebrated by Centennial Birthday of

this country a couple of months ago, so let's

talk a little bit about the tricentennial of plant poisoning

in the United States of America. In 16 76

there was a rebellion in Jamestown, Virginia, and

the governor dispatched some soldiers from Williamsburg. It's about

a 25 mile hike to Jamestown and, uh,

to put down the rebellion of bacon so they didn't

make it in one day and they camped overnight and

they cook their dinner and they gathered the leaves of

a wild plant and they for a quote boiled salad

And they went crazy for 11 days after eating

a single meal of this plant, I took this

picture in a pastor up near coming. I believe

what you're looking at is jimson weed. For several

years, my favorite source of it was the ground

which is now occupied by the medical administration building

on the campus. It was a beautiful, huge

plant that grew up there every year, uh,

notch plants holes and to leave the trumpet shaped white

flour, which opens up later in the day and

then usually closed early in the day. This is

jimson weed, and the name is a really corruption

of the word Jamestown. I shouldn't have said corruption

Language have told me that that's actually the way

people spoke back in the 17th century, and Sinjin

would be for Saint John and jimson for Jamestown.

So this plant is named jimson weed in this country

referring to that historic incident. Here is another

view of the plant showing the pods and giving rise

to the another name. Thorn apple. This is

one of the problems in phyto toxicology. His name's

so really anybody can tell you the botanical name and

a little colloquial names may refer to different plants and

be very confusing. Mhm. But about a year

ago, this is out of Atlanta paper. The

Cobb County Police crackdown on the sale of jimson We

discovered that the potentially lethal substance has been billed as

a legal high and sold across the counter at some

businesses. There's not a law against this weed,

and it can grow anywhere it wants to. And

some pharmacist a couple of them were actually selling.

I hospitalized two girls at Egleston Hospital. Somebody were

passing out seeds of jimson weed at a local teenage

hangout. Uh, here is the pods sliced so

you can see the seeds. Now this plant is

one of the group's sole. Initiate contains his chief

poisoning, their atropine belladonna like alkaloids, um,

for serious poisoning, such as those soldiers who are

reserved for 11, 10 or 11 days. And

they had to be guarded to protect themselves, uh

or for serious cardiac effects. Due to this

we do have an antidote, and that would

be Faisal stigma solicit like given in doses of 1

to 2 mg at a time. For adults,

this particular drug crosses the blood brain barrier, and

for that reason, if you have central nervous system

effects would be superior to neo stigma for offsetting the

anti colon ergic effects. This is a good type

of a whole group of plants belonging to the soul

in a society in which, uh, produce anti

colon ergic effect. This little plant is Carolina horse

nettle, which is abundant in Atlanta. Let's go

a little later in the season. You can see

it's producing these little Berries. This is taken under

my kitchen window, and here they are in the

fall. The green. The green leaves are another

plant. The stickers are pretty well gone, the

big leaves and all. We have a little yellow

tomatoes about a foot off the ground, where for

small Children can easily get them in. Two or

three of these could be a lethal dose of belladonna

alkaloids. So it's abundant, and it's available to

little Children and keep it in mind. About a

half a mile from my home indicator, I took

this picture of black night shade which doesn't at this

time have Berries come up a little blueberry like things

only their darker. And Luther Burbank tried to develop

this plant for edible use, but it was not

possible because it, too, is poisonous. Another

member of the same family as the old homely potato

the eyes of the potato and any green spots

if you peel the potato and you found green spots

underneath are kind of areas of the plant that have

concentrations of belladonna like alkaloids also spoiled potatoes. So

it brings up another important point that mankind has learned

over many thousands of years. What's good to eat

and what is it? There's still many thousands of

plants that no hero has eaten and proven were edible

or a fool, eaten and proven that it was

lethal. But Children have gotten into potato bins and

been eating potatoes or eating these eyes, and have

got atropine poisoning in the same way. Another member

of the same family is formally known as the Love

Apple and now known as a tomato, this Barry

is the only edible part safely edible part of the

plant. People that have used the greens and salads

for instance again have suffered from poisoning due to belladonna

like alkaloids. Now these are only a few soul

and they see the large plant family, and

most of them will have this kind of poisoning.

And it may be minor. The two girls I

put in Eccleston Hospital had hallucinations for one day,

and they began to come out of it. And

we try a little Faisal stigma, and it didn't

do much, but they were doing so well.

We didn't push it very hard, but it could

be very serious and even lethal. And there's one

that has an antidote that could be very helpful in

caring for the patient. Mm, reverting to my

historic format. This is a topographical map. North

Georgia and scut gaps as fresh knob cut off gap

I often wondered who got cut off there,

but here is milk sick, cold. Let's look

a little further north and NAFTA Halo quadrant in North

Carolina. And here is milk sick knob. And

if you get up these maps and look all up

and down the appellations, you'll see this, uh

name repeated over and over again. Milk sick

This and milk sick that there at least in

the late 19 forties, where ghost towns in Illinois

where people had to move out because of the

occurrence of the disease known as milk sickness in cattle

known as trembles. Abraham Lincoln wants to describe General

McLelland as he was stalled in front of Richmond as

having a bad case of the slows, which was

another name for this. Lincoln knew about the disease

because his mother died from, and this in fact

is said to have been the leading cause of

death in the United States of America in the early

18 hundreds. Not cancer, not cardiovascular disease,

but this disease. People had abandoned areas where they

were living because they couldn't raise the calves and they

couldn't raise their Children and the cause of this disease

And it took 100 years to find out what

it was about 1917. Finally, the poison was

isolated from this plant. Which is you purgatory,

um, logos, um, or whites, American

snake root or sometimes known as, uh, Deer

Foot, because the leaf represents the shape of a

deer track. This is on the Appalachian Trail,

this north of Trey Mountain and Raven County. When

the thing is in bloom. What happens is that

towards the end of summer, when the preferred forage

is used up taking in a dry summer, such

as we have had the cattle were allowed to arrange

freely into the hills and they'd go up in the

hills in the summertime and they start eating this plant

which contains a very complex alcohol which is not

yet completely characterized, known as trim a tall.

There is no way for this to get out of

the cattle except through the milk. It's concentrated in

the fat. So the female, uh, cow

is better off than the boat because he can get

rid of some of it. But her calf dies

And, of course, the human babies fed

the milk. Uh, it was an antiquity at

the time, but I made it happen to see

one. When I was a house officer in Saint

Louis, his kid was brought in. He reeked

of acid tone. He had two small breathing and

looked for all the world like diabetes ketoacidosis. But

he didn't have that. His blood sugar wasn't up

so it must be solicited intoxication because that will

cause key is severe. Keto acidosis we couldn't get

a history for, uh, use of aspirin or

other Solicit lets kids Grandfather kept muttering Something about kids

got milk sickness. Kids got milk sickness, but

us young doctors weren't paying much attention to Grandpa over

in the corner. But fortunately in the Department of

Medicine in Washington University, there was a physician who

was interested in medical history, and he knew about

milk sickness and much of what I've told you,

I learned from him about the ghost towns and that

sort of thing. The kid really did have milk

sickness, severe keto acidosis, which and he'd been

drinking, of course, milk from the family's cows

The only reason we don't have it now is

that we pin up cattle. There's no known way

of detoxifying the milk so cattle ranging in rural areas

There is another plant out west, which contains

the same substance and causes trembles, and it's one

of the many plants called local lead in the western

United States. Okay, thinking of poisonous plants always

brings to mind, of course, mushrooms, and

they can indeed be quite a puzzle and an annoyance

and even very deadly. What I'm showing you is

a specimen of Amanita must carry. This is the

favorite artists mushroom. It's usually maybe red or yellow

These are sort of salmon with the warts.

And and I took this on unsuccessful deer hunting trip

So I finished to get my camera out and

take some pictures and see to it likes to grow

around pine needles. Uh, the name must carry

A is really derived from the Latin Musca domestic A

which is the name of the common house fly

This is otherwise sometimes known as the fly Amanita

because mhm, this mushroom, if eaten by

flies, kills the flies. My mother was born

in Bohemia and she has told me that she could

remember as a little girl. They would have plates

with pieces of this mushroom about the house as a

way to sort of flat paper flies when stick to

it, but they'd eat it. In fact,

the musk corinne content of this mushroom is minimal.

It may vary with conditions of growth, but you

will still find in many texts to use atropine in

the treatment of this. This will cause pretty promptly

within a few hours, in an hour or so

guests severe gastroenteritis However, the this disappears rather

quickly. There is another toxin in it called Muska

mole, which is a central nervous system hallucinogen.

So this is also the mushroom that people for centuries

have eaten first hallucinatory effects Tribes in Siberia utilize this

mushroom in religious rituals. The hallucinatory toxin is excreted

unchanged in the urine, whereas the gastroenteritis toxin is

not in. The Siberian priests are said to have

compelled the slaves to eat the mushroom, and then

they could drink the slaves urine and not suffer.

The discomfort of the gastroenteritis was they went through their

religious ceremonies. In any event, poisoned by this

attention to salt and water, electrolyte balance would be

the main thing. And a trippin, uh,

not really be needed. There are some other mushrooms

that would produce the effects gastro enteric effects of must

Corinne, for which atropine might be a useful tool

But don't think if you, uh, run

into this problem that you need to charge in with

large doses of, um, entropy them. Anita

group is a group contained the most toxic mushrooms that

we have, but it also contains some edible ones

This is another view of the amanita must carry

It shows a color a little better and a

couple of identifying. Uh, don't change the slide

I'm sorry. Uh, this skirt here,

which is mushroom develops, is adherent up here and

is now breaking loose. And then the this one

does not must carry it does not have a cup

which I'm going to show you later. Now

if we go on to the next one,

this is another AM Anita must carry, which was

colorless. I took that one in the in Maryland

Okay. And here's one that popped up overnight

next to my campsite in Maryland. And if we

look at it again in about four days, there

it is. This is Amanita Caesarea, which is

supposed to be quite a delicacy. Now we get

down to the point about mushroom identification and eating them

or not. The only safe thing is, don't

eat any wild mushrooms. Eat the team ones that

have been grown for the purpose. And you can't

count on identifying him. If the victim is brought

into the emergency room and he ate mushrooms, the

only safe thing is to believe it was a poisonous

one. Get the stomach emptied and, uh don't

stew around trying to identify it. They bring you

a piece of the mushroom or you're likely not.

You've really got to dig a mushroom up, get

everything out so you can see the whole thing.

It might take spore prints, which would be 24

hours before you could identify the mushroom. And even

experts have been fooled and gotten very sick. Uh

in pediatrics, we have added problem that,

uh, the child is likely to eat in the

mushroom raw, and some of these will be partially

detoxified by cooking this quite aside, bees or jackal

Lantern mushroom again, a poisonous one. And here

is the most deadly 11 of the white, um

Anita's There are three or four that grow in

this country. The Amanita Floyd's is said to be

a European variation of it. Uh, but white

mushrooms with white gills with the skirt hanging down and

with his vulva or cup actually as a mushroom developed

This was connected up here. But that part

is those are, uh, certainly dangerous signs.

But again, the best thing is don't pick a

mushroom to eat it one or two bites of the

Yemeni taverna and money to buy Rosa and Amanita Floyd

can, uh, contain enough toxin to be lethal

Characteristically, there are no symptoms for 68 hours

or more. And then there's a severe gastroenteritis,

which gets better in a couple of days, following

which there is an onset of liver necrosis and the

patient dies of liver failure. Death? Yeah,

Dr Barter and NIH has an investigational drug known as

thigh optic acid, which has been used rather widely

in Europe. UM, which has shown some promise

And if we were to run into this,

we would call in ih get in touch with him

and get a supply of the drug. Other than

that, the management would be to empty the G

I checked by, uh, emphasis of the

voyage. Use activated charcoal to absorb the toxin and

use sodium sulfate to purge the gut and get it

out. And then the usual things that one would

do to protect the liver, such as sterilizing the

gut and in the usual regime for liver failure.

Depending on how much the toxin you are able to

remove from the gut and the success of your other

measures, you might hope for a mortality rate of

somewhat less than 50% but this really can be a

very deadly one. I refer to the Roman Army

Earlier at one time, they had a good

medical service, and then, as time went on

and got politicized, they began to have commissars with

the legions whose purpose was to get rid of,

uh, officers and other people who were making trouble

And they had a G I poison kit,

which included, uh, these mushrooms as one of

the, uh, tools with for the poisoner to

use. This is a Russell A a medic.

I show this picture especially so you can see the

bite. It looks like a squirrel or a rabbit

or something has taken a bite out of it.

Different animals have different enzyme systems, and so what

is poisonous for humans may not be poisonous for other

species, and one cannot rely on the fact that

you see another animal eat it and not die,

too, is a demonstration that it's perfectly all right

for the human, for that matter. Humans have

different enzyme species, so you may in a certain

locality. We've always eaten this mushroom. We know

it's safe and it's okay. It might be true

for those people, and it may not be true

for you, so you have to be careful.

There is a one species that is highly toxic in

Europe, slightly toxic, toxic in the United States

in the eastern part and quite edible in the western

part. So some differences, conditions of growth then

have made a difference in that particular. And that's

mm. And here's a nice little one of the

inky cap or completeness. Tomatoes you can see.

It's turning dark around the edges. This is an

edible mushroom, except it has a dice alpha ram

like effect and abuse, like if you eat it

and you take wine with the meal or within a

few hours afterwards you will get very sick. If

you don't take the alcohol you want it inhibits alcohol

The hydrogen niece. Mhm. Now let's go

on to another group of plants and I'll show you

a couple of pictures. You probably recognize this is

a mountain laurel. Okay, this plant is known

to have been used by Cherokee and then to commit

suicide. Rhododendron is similarly poisonous, and so is

the azalea, and all these plants contain principles said

to be similar to Karar E. The Buckeye does

as well. And if you visit Indian Mountain National

Park down there making and Zach Mall G, I

think it is in the museum. They've got a

display relative to how the Indians used to fish with

Buckeye branches. They take branches with the leaves and

thrashing about in the stream, which would extract enough

of the poison from the Buckeye to paralyze the fish

which would come floating on the surface. And

then they'd scoop them up. And it was a

quick, easy way of fishing without dynamite. Incidentally

we know in our poison center, at least

of one goat who died from eating azalea plants.

A whole lot of information about poisonous plants comes from

veterinary practice, because there it's not just an accidental

little nibble locale. Go out and eat 10% of

her body weight in something and die. In fact

the veterinary medicine they use percent of body weight

is a description of the dose of the plants,

and this reminds me to mention a couple other things

that really intrigued me. I spoke how medicine knows

a great debt to plants. The common Sweet pea

if you feed it to rats, causes a

distinctive lesion dissecting aneurysm of the aorta. Now that

ought to mean something to cardiovascular specialists. A sweet

pea, if you feed it to a sheep and

some other flowers of lupines, causes another distinctive lesion

They're called crooked calf. It disturbs the metabolism

of cartilage, and the animal ends up with the

scoliosis. Maybe there's something in there to orthopedist might

be interested in a poke lead, which I want

to show you in a few minutes has a toxin

in it, which is my photogenic and stimulates the

division and multiplication of white blood cells. And as

I understand that's been used as a research to,

I just wonder, could that possibly be useful?

And Luca Pontius, for instance? And by now

most of you have recognized what I'm showing you

as an apple with seeds, some of which I've

cut open. There are a number of plants that

contain a Magdalene, which, when it gets into

the digestive juices of the stomach, release hydro sonic

acid, and the ensuing result is cyanide poisoning.

In apple is one of probably every one of us

have swallowed apple seeds and nothing happened because we swallow

them this way. And I think if I chewed

up, I wouldn't be afraid to chew up one

or two apple seeds and swallow it either. Mhm

caption here says, Go ahead. It's organic.

Uh, here is the problem. In recent years

people have gone organic, and, uh,

there have been making their own foods and eating all

kinds of plants and so forth. Uh, but

there have been recent cases of cyanide poisoning stemming from

the fact that people would save up apple seeds also

peach seeds and grind them up and put them in

their homemade granola cereal. When they do that,

they get a big dose of this stuff and can

be brought in with cyanide. Poison? Yes.

Now cyanide poisoning. You think that is a black

capsule and is going to kill you in a minute

or two? But actually, in some cases,

there is time enough to do something about it.

Check the emergency room. It ought to have a

cyanide poisoning kit from Eli Lilly. They distributed to

hospitals free of charge. And I know here,

Grady, we've had them. But be sure yours

does too. This contains animal nitrite, pearls,

sodium nitrite and sodium sulfate. And the drill is

that cyanide combines with the ferric ion, and it

poisons the respiratory enzymes at the cellular level. So

what you're trying to do in treating this patient is

convert his hemoglobin a part of it, too.

Met hemoglobin. Thanks. You let him inhale them

on nights, right? While the nurses cracking open

and preparing the sodium nitrite for an injection. Ivy

and the nitrite should convert part of his human global

to meet human global, which will act as a

sink for the cyanide and take up the cyanide as

the first emergency measure. And then you give the

sodium thio sulphate intravenously to provide abundant sulfur, uh

for enzyme rodent nace to convert the cyanide to

less toxic cyanide. Of course, you have to

be sure if you got somebody with sickle cell anemia

He's very anemic. You have to have some

idea how anemic is is because you don't want it

Convert all its hemoglobin to met him, but

this is all boxed up in a nice little green

cardboard box you should have in your emergency rooms with

me. 123 If you everything have to face Cyanogen

Inc. Uh, poisoning This wild cherry tree grew

up in my backyard as we'd choke cherry. The

fruit is not very palatable but edible. But the

seeds are not. And the horses have eaten the

stems and the leaves and died of cyanide poisoning.

It's an elderberry. I took this picture down in

the creek near the Veterans Hospital. I'm telling you

where these came from because this is all sent a

mile or two miles of memory campus. No problem

finding poisons writing handily. Uh, the flowers are

edible, and there's some pancake recipes that call for

them. The leaves and stems are again signed a

genetic and little boys, before our plastic straws were

available. Used to push the pith out of elderberry

stems and use them for peace shooters and would end

up chewing on them. Have gotten sick from that

elderberry wine. Well, no remedy for an effective

one for dismantle area. Varies are good, but

that's the only part of the plant. Yeah,

Now, this is some statistics that we have bigger

numbers now, but the proportion is about the same

derived from cause of the poison control center, and

you can see. By and large, the fruit

of the plant is the thing, uh, that

mostly we have to deal with. And the Berries

in this locality that would comprise the most common one

are holly, poke, liriope, power can't Dog

Wooden and Nina. I have started the ones that

are non toxic. Let's actually look at them all

Species of holly are said to be toxic,

some probably just mildly so, and it must be

a big dose factor. Uh, well, forget

a call about a child eating holly barriers. We

induce emphasis to try to play it safe. God

here's poke weed showing just early Berries. Now

Southerners here know that people eat Polk salad made out

of leaves of the plant, and it should be

the tender top leaves. And the trick is to

boil the plant, uh, twice throwing away the

waters. The heat helps to detoxify the toxin.

The hot water extracts it, so if you carefully

do this, then it may be you can you

can eat the plant. Actually, you can buy

can poke leaves now in the store. The stems

are turning red and will turn be even redder.

The closer you get to the ground. The more

toxic plant is the Berries, uh, eating raw

are can be toxic baked in a pie. The

high oven temperature made detoxified, so you'll hear plenty

of people tell you about that. Here is a

more mature plant and see the stems of turned red

And here are there's two varieties poke. We

won the Berries hang down the other ones. They

stick out straight. This is the region to type

and they make. Now I can remember.

As a little boy, we used to use this

as Indian paint, and we played Indian smear our

faces with it. But somebody had told us,

never eat them. They were poisonous, and that

was good advice. Liriope is very common around Atlanta

is a border plant, and this shows a little

purple flowers, which kids eat. There will be

some green and later turning a woody, dry black

uh, colored Berries, which are not toxic

But they're frequently, and here it is the

green Berries, and I don't know if there's any

hadn't quite turned dark at the time I took that

picture. The power of cancer. Some people make

jelly out of this plant and it is not toxic

but we get a number of calls people worry

about. It is a confusion between it and holly

amongst people, but notice that the leaves are oval

and don't have stickers on it, whereas all Holly's

have got scalloped edges with stickers around the edges.

And that can help you easily to differentiate that if

you're talking on the telephone to someone and the dog

would, which is nontoxic. But the gutters will

run red with dogwood Berries here pretty soon, and

the nandina, which looks good and in our resources

are listed, is edible with caution. We've known

the number of Children who have swallowed nandina Berries,

and we've had no feedback that any of them got

sick. And just to show you another one of

the hazards of natural foods and eating, look at

these two plants I've shown to you both. Here

are green poke Berries, a few of them turning

purple. Here is elderberry, see you much smaller

and all umbrella and the two plants growing side by

side and mingling their branches together, someone out carelessly

stripping off elderberries could easily in this situation, pick

up from poisonous pope Berries Now there are a group

of plants that have cardiac like asides and uh,

in them. And because digitalis like poisoning and an

important one in the South and Florida and in California

is oleander, this is the white oleander, and

there's another species with red, the long lance shaped

leaves. It's used as a decorative plant, highway

medians and some in Florida. It grows wild

in Florida and in California. And, uh,

most of the toxicity I'm aware of has been in

Children who chewed the leaves. But there are reports

of people using the stems of weenie roasts for Spitz

and enough of the toxin getting into the meat to

cause serious illness. Showers aren't eating too much,

but I thought I should show a picture. Digitalis

purpurea. I don't think I've ever seen the plant

live crib, this one from another source. But

that's what Digitalis looks like. And, of course

there are many of us in the audience can

remember when what we were giving was digitalis leaf and

when the only injectable preparation was digital in an extractive

digitalis leaf coming back. Now, too, parts

ingested leave of plants. Curiosity to us is that

the person who is most likely to eat the leaf

of the plant as a baby who can't even walk

Usually the peak incidence is around seven or eight

months of age, but it comprises a significant number

of calls we get about this. So let's look

at a few of the plants that are common and

have in our local experience. Valid Indian elephant Aaron

Poinsettia are ones that we have to be concerned with

Here is a file of Denver and sitting on

my windows cell is a grandparent. Have to be

careful. This thing grew down down and could come

down close enough to our visiting grandchild. My moonshine

if the playpen was put to close and that

is what has often happened. We had a call

from one mother in law who said I told her

not to buy that defund back here, but she

went ahead and did, and with in an hour

or two after they brought it home, Baby had

reached out between the bars and the playpen and had

started eating the Diefenbach Yah, otherwise known as dumb

cane. This contains oxalate needle like crystals, but

it also contains a protein politic enzyme and the reason

the plant is called dumb cane is if you should

get a big enough dose in your mouth and get

an enormous swelling of the oral mucous membranes sufficient to

necessitate tracheostomy to allow breathing. And some reported cases

even enough to be fatal from, uh, preparatory

obstruction. And hence the name dumb cane, because

one cannot talk if your tongue is so swelled from

irritation. And I know one physician around here just

to tell how he got tricked into taking a bite

of it by some of his companions when he was

a small child, uh, daring him to do

this, these things are readily available. This is

on Scott Boulevard. Out indicator are beautiful Big elephant

air plant right down to the ground or somebody could

probably small child might eat it. Beautiful caladiums that

in somebody's garden around the tree has the same type

of problem, as does the Father Dendreon that I

showed you earlier. I mentioned Point set here because

at the time we compile those statistics that was still

considered to be toxic medical literature. Very interesting when

you really go back into it. There was one

child who ate a wild poinsettia plant in Hawaii was

an army officers child back, but somewhere around 1903

And this child died, and from that stems

the idea that the plant is toxic. And it

may have been because in the intervening 70 odd years

the plan has been hybridized and developed to try

to make it a more beautiful decorative plant. And

that's a great question. Whether it's now because even

the same plant is that in common with a number

of plants, it may be irritated if you eat

enough of it. One intrepid botanist has eaten a

whole point city, a plant to prove that it

was not toxic. And yet over this country,

uh, many poison control centers and gathering statistics.

Still, there are a number of calls coming in

where kids have eaten the leaves around Christmas time and

have gotten diarrhea or gastroenteritis, so it's probably variable

We think it's not seriously poisonous, and we're

no longer worrying people about it. But we wouldn't

be surprised if somebody got at least a little bit

at all from taking it. This is, uh

yellow jasmine on somebody's mailbox. This is on

the route traverse between Grady and Emory University campus.

Take a closer look at it. A beautiful plant

It looks like honeysuckle, and it has nectar

at the base of the plant, which contains a

drug similar to strict nine. Now, normal honeysuckle

plant is not toxic, but this one is.

And again there are reports of Children sucking the,

uh, nectar out of this plant and, uh

having seizures and nervous system stimulation similar to what

you would expect from the effects of strict nine.

Hard to ignore would be this This is, uh

Castor plant. Yeah, if you were a

little kid long enough to go, you don't have

to be told that's poisonous plant. If you had

to take cash royal, that's where it comes from

These are the beans, which about four of

them Here's a cluster of four in each one of

those beautiful red pods. Two or three of these

if chewed and not swallowed whole, could be

a lethal dose for a small child that grows wild

in Florida. But I found one that somebody threw

away in the gutter, not indicator, but wisteria

This one's taken near. Scott Boulevard has pods

with beans in it which can cause a severe gastroenteritis

and make at least small Children exceedingly ill again.

A lot of these things that are beautiful and tempting

the beans. It looks like other beans. And

uh, so the sweet pea, incidentally,

is poisonous to human beings. But I don't think

it causes dissecting, aneurysm or, uh, scoliosis

In those cases, I and the privet hedge

the barriers of which you've taken enough of their reports

of those being toxic. And these are things you

have around the house are your neighbors do. That's

right across my driveway and the neighbors plant. And

again. You don't have to be very worried.

But if you've got toddling Children around pulling these things

off, sampling and eating them, then it can

be for the pediatrician an important problem. So so

everybody will know what poison ivy looks like. Here

we are in the classic Try Folio. This one

is an ivy form climbing up a tree. It

can occur. It's a low bush. If the

leaves are a little more, knots will get called

poison oak. But the net effect is all the

same. It's a sensitizing plant and once sensitized of

subsequent exposure and cause all degrees of dermatitis. A

nearby tree also had the Virginia creeper, which can

be distinguished by having five instead of three leaves.

For most people, this is not a sensitize er

and not a toxic plant. And just to be

differentiated from it, you'll hear about poison sumac.

Well, this isn't poison sumac. This is red

sumac, but you're going to see it turning redder

and redder. And all the highway cuts if you're

driving around 2 85 in the perimeter, for instance

is a lot of it. And up in

the hills, it's a highland plant. It's nontoxic

The Berries contain malic acid, which is one

of the acid you find in apples and a natural

or herb tyg, and drink can be made out

of it. This is a staghorn sumac, which

is fuzzy and looks like a deer, antlers and

velvet, and hence the name the poison sumac catch

I don't have a picture of is a low

land marshy plant with white Berries eat. The Berries

are poisonous, and it's a skin sensitizing, too

But the sumac you're going to see around North

Georgia is I've never seen a poison sumac, and

it's all this innocuous plant. This is trumpet vine

Kids play with it. If you stop up

the corner with your thumb and give it a big

squeeze, it will explode. But the other name

for it is college, so it does the same

thing as poison ivy. If you happen to get

sensitized to it and mess around with it, you're

going to have a problem, too. Okay.

Some years ago, about three years ago, we

compiled a list of all the different plants that we've

had calls about somebody eating poison control centers, 94

on the list. You don't have to try to

look it over. And I think we could have

added to some there anything here to focus here again

You see, you know, with all the

effort to control poisoning, pediatricians are feeling a little

bit better. The mortality of for poisoning amongst Children

is going down, but unfortunately it's going up amongst

young adults and probably most of that. And this

is just plant poisoning I'm talking about. Now I

have to do with lifestyle drug habits. But there

you are, and I showed you earlier newspaper clipping

from relative to the jimson weed now here is somebody

taking the kids out in the woods. When Rhonda

I don't eat any Berries or anything. Some of

the things you find growing wild can be poisonous.

And she wants to know. Does the Food and

Drug Administration know about this? We've carried, uh

a bad problem. A lot of these exotic

plants, they're brought into the house for decorative purposes

now, and, uh, we get called about

A lot of nobody knows if they're poisonous or

not. And we've made some effort to try to

get the purveyors of these plants to assume responsibility and

finding out. Or maybe in dying a little research

And we've had correspondence with the Department of Agriculture

and haven't gotten anywhere. They keep saying what everybody

knows about jimson weed and so forth, but the

influx of exotic plants from Central America and Africa.

There's another problem, but so you may well be

faced with somebody who's eating it accidentally. Who's eating

it deliberately? Somebody's child. Maybe your own.

The safest thing, if in doubt, will probably

be to get it out of the stomach promptly.

Remember, activated charcoal is good at absorbent. Stay

away from those mushrooms if you've got a symptomatic patient

Except for the anti coal energy type poisoning where

you can use Faisal stigma or the opiate narcotic type

where you can use naloxone. You don't really have

a specific antidotes, so the rest of the treatment

is going to be physiological. But if you remember

that most of our much of our physiology we've learned

from poison plants well, I think you can make

out pretty well. Thank you. Yeah, just

for the audience. Dr Robert, let me ask

you about since thinking about Christmas, how about nutmeg

Nothing makes me used is in a hallucinogen,

and only there between the poison, of course,

in a food or a poison and drug is a

dose that you take. Adults have been known to

survive eating 10 16 nutmegs, but even there's always

somebody that gets very sick e on lesser dose.

But it is a poison in a sufficient dose and

cause solution. Hallucinations, which is the reason people

taking it a little bit Sprinkle on your eggnog is

very nice. Yes,