Healing with Herbs and Rituals by Eliseo "Cheo" Torres;Sawyer Timothy L.;

Author:Eliseo "Cheo", Torres;Sawyer, Timothy L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2006-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

A Few Cautions

Any book about herbs is bound to be filled with cautions. Herbs are, after all, potent medicine. It is possible to overdose on herbs just as it is to overdose on street drugs. In addition, many plants have poisonous parts. It may be perfectly safe to eat the leaves of a plant, for example, and deadly to eat the blossoms, or vice versa. Or the plant may be perfectly safe if eaten fresh, but become poisonous as it wilts.

It is no wonder, then, that books about herbs have to contain a lot of warnings. In fact, to be on the safe side, consider this statement an inflexible rule: never eat, chew, or drink tea brewed from any part of an unknown plant.

For example, some plants with poisonous berries are mistletoe, holly, and any variety of ivy. Plants with poisonous leaves include azalea, lily of the valley, and elephant ears. Plants with poisonous roots or bulbs include iris, daffodil, and violet. Some plants have poisonous stems, vines, or seeds. In this category are potato, tomato, cherry, rhubarb, and hydrangea. Still others—peach and apricot, to name two—have poisonous pits.

Herbal medicine, obviously, can be far from benign!

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York illustrated this very well one year by exhibiting a surprising array of plants that can cause harm. These ranged from English ivy to yew. (The leaves and seeds of yew, if eaten, can cause heart failure!)

And from an historic standpoint, the toxic characteristics of some plants have provoked some really interesting speculation. For example, there is one theory that the Salem witches weren’t witches after all, but had eaten an hallucinogenic substance similar to LSD. They are thought to have consumed St. Anthony’s fire, a fungus that grows on grain—especially rye.

Also, every now and then, dangerous ingredients are included in pre-packaged herbal remedies. For example, one supplier of “folk” medicine produced two cures for empacho called “Greta” and “Azarcón.” Greta proved to have a base of lead monoxide and Azarcón was 90 percent lead tetroxide. Both were extremely toxic and were in regular use in a number of Mexican and Mexican-American homes! Though they were originally blended to cure empacho, which is similar to intestinal blockage, they were being used to treat headache and even menstrual disorders.

Lead monoxide—and Greta, when analyzed, proved to have 90 to 98 percent of this substance as its base—changes to lead chloride at stomach temperatures and, because of this, is readily absorbed into the bloodstream. The base metal of Azarcón did not convert to lead chloride and was less dangerous. But both, if ingested over long periods of time, would cause lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning can kill but more often those who survive are left severely retarded or handicapped in other ways.

It is thought that Greta and Azarcón became popular because they are similar in color to a remedy used by curanderos: saffron or, in Spanish, azafrán. The pre-packaged formulas seem to be attempts to copy the folk remedy for empacho, but alas, in this case, with disastrous or even lethal results.

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