Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 2 (2010), p. 295

It is hard to imagine the trials and errors experienced by our ancestors as the safe plants were distinguished from the unsafe. We benefit from such ‘inherited knowledge’, as Bevan-Jones describes it, but until written documents were available it could only be transmitted orally. It is to the writings of such giants of medical history as Hippocrates and Dioscorides, and to the authors of the herbals that followed, that we owe so much. This book forms a bridge between these old works, in which ‘Quite sensible views could be followed by utter nonsense’, and the latest advances in the biochemistry of plant toxins. The toxicological aspect of ethnobotany is covered in an eminently readable manner, the emphasis throughout being on the use (and abuse) of plants for medicine rather than for food.

In part one (pp.5–27), ‘Concise History…’, there are tantalizing glimpses of the use of poisonous plants, such as a Palaeolithic spear tipped with yew; poisons being tested on criminals in the third and second centuries BC; the ‘bespoke’ poisons of Roman times; the practices of the Saxon leeches (‘If a man’s hair fall off, work him a salve…’); manuscripts on herbal medicine from religious institutions in medieval Europe; the four humours; the astrological approach of Culpeper; the seventeenth-century London grocers who stocked ‘roots, herbs, gum, oils, confectionery, ointments and plaisters’ as well as food; the chemists and druggists who replaced the apothecaries; and finally the carefully prepared, plant-based pharmaceutical medicines of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In part two (pp.28–157), there are entries on 36 plants and the medicaments of which they are ingredients. The plants are listed alphabetically by an English common name, but this gives rise to occasional confusions, such as the entry on cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), which is not in the index and is found with spurge laurel (Daphne laureola) to which it is not related either botanically or by its toxins.

Almost all of the text applies to herbal remedies for human diseases, but there are a few references to animals, an example being the treatment of cattle diseases ‘by boring a hole in the ear and inserting hellebore’, after which, ‘whiles the part which is circled aboute dyeth and falleth awaye yt hole beast is saved with the lose of a very small part’.

Plant toxins have been described as intoxicating, stupefying, mind-altering, medicinal, dangerous or even lethal, and the case reports that cover these aspects make fascinating reading. Some reports are presented as quotations that retain all the quaintness of style, word use, and spelling of the original, while others are translated or cited. A good balance is maintained between the useful and the dangerous, the authentic and the magic, and the therapeutic and the toxic.

Part three (pp.158–72) is on fungi, and begins with a consideration of the types of poisoning they can cause. There is a general absence of fungi from old texts, but an exception is shown by a quotation from the Grete Herball: ‘Fungi ben musherons. There be two maners of them, one maner is deadly and sleeth them that eateth of them and the other dooth not.’ There are details on the death cap (Amanita phalloides), probably the most deadly poisonous fungus known, and on three others that have psycho-active properties.

Superb illustrations are supplied profusely throughout the book, and some have useful extended captions. Many of the plates are colour photographs taken by the author, and there are reproductions from old literature. The three appendices include a list of poisonous plants mentioned in European texts, and notes on a further 17 plants, eight relevant websites, and three UK gardens. There is a glossary, a list of 387 references – which is a tribute to the extensive research carried out by the author – and a bibliography with 93 entries.

Bevan-Jones’s stated aim of writing a ‘celebration’ of poisonous plants and exploring ‘their diverse and powerful properties’ has been amply achieved, and there is a wealth of information in every paragraph. The book will be of interest to historians and agriculturists, as well as botanists and toxicologists.