Michael Brown - Death in the Garden

MICHAEL BROWN

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

PEN & SWORD WHITE OWL

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright Michael Brown

ISBN 9781526708380

eISBN 9781526708403

Mobi ISBN 9781526708397

The right of Michael brown to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Y ou may have picked up this book thinking that it is a murder mystery story. In some ways, you would be correct, because poisonous plants have played a major part in murders, passion and myth.

We imagine that gardens are a place of peacefulness, a refuge from the world, where we will be safe and escape the madness and dangers of the outside world; for the most part, this is true. But the garden has always had connotations of evil lurking within. God created the Garden of Eden and gave Adam the task of tending it. It was a place of beautiful trees and fruits that were good to eat, so whatever other people may say, gardening really is the oldest profession. To save him from becoming lonely, God created a partner from Adams rib. Adam and Eve were happy in the garden until Eve was tempted by a serpent to eat of the forbidden fruit. She in turn tempted Adam and God threw them out of the Garden to henceforth earn their bread by the sweat of their brows.

Gardening became a way to stay alive for the majority of the population who had to grow their own food and that of their masters, but for the very wealthy it became a way to create their own paradise, a reminder of the lost haven of myth; yet the garden could become a prison and safety could be elusive. Some plants could make you very ill, or even kill you, if not used correctly. The fear of being bitten by snakes or other venomous beasts and insects is shown by the frequent antidotes provided by the early herbals. Murder and suicides are written about in stories and plays, which possibly reflected real life. Gardeners used poisons to kill the pests that attacked the plants that they needed for food, and in some cases the same poisons were responsible for the deaths of the gardeners too. Even today, many deaths and injuries are the result of tending to the garden.

P lants generally seem to produce poisons to protect themselves, or parts of themselves, from predators that would eat them. Not every species is affected by specific poisons, and there is a wide range of effect within a species that consumes the poison.

As humans we may ask, What is a poison? Paracelsus said that it is the dose alone that makes something a poison. He was correct, because the answer is not as straightforward as may be imagined. Many poisons have beneficial uses for both humans and animals at the correct dosage. The problem does not end there, as what may be beneficial for some people, may affect others in a very different manner. Some people may be affected quite quickly with a dose of a poison, whereas others may only be affected to a lesser extent, or not affected at all.

The discovery of the practical uses of poisonous plants is now lost in history. How the poisonous properties were discovered and developed will probably never be known. The first discoveries are likely to have been accidental; the refining of their use is also not known, but presumably somebody had to experiment on somebody else, or did somebody make themselves ill, or die, by eating a new plant? Were prisoners of war or those who committed misdemeanours used for experimentation? Observation of wild creatures may have helped, but many species of animal may not be affected by the poisons in the same way as mankind. Many poisonous substances are quickly expelled from the body. The berries of most poisonous plants have a bitter or sharp taste that automatically makes you spit them out in disgust, but not all of them. Perhaps somebody ate the plant and was made ill. If they died then the conclusion was fairly obvious, but they may have survived, what then? Would they have described the effects to their companions who could then be more careful in future or make practical use of the plants properties? How anybody discovered that the roots of Manihot esculenta , Cassava, which contain cyanogenic glycosides, could be made edible is quite amazing. The pearl-like processed root was a staple food when I was a child; we knew it as tapioca.

The use of cassava possibly dates to 10,000 years ago in central Brazil, with the oldest proven growing of the plant for food 1,400 years ago at a Mayan site in El Salvador. In modern times, Africa is the country most reliant on the plant for food. The sweet tubers are the safest; the bitter ones can contain up to fifty times more cyanide and tubers collected during drought conditions are especially toxic. The pre-Columbian peoples of America make flour from the roots. When it is to be used, the flour is mixed with water to make a paste that is rolled thin, spread over a basket and left in the shade for five hours or more, when most of the cyanide will have broken down and the flour is safe to eat. The West African method is to put the tubers in water for a few days so that they begin to ferment and become soft. The peel and central fibres are removed and the remaining pulp pounded, then put in sacks and pressed with stones to remove the water, and with it the cyanide. Once pressed, the pulp can be dried thoroughly in the sun.

Poison has been used on arrow and spear heads from very ancient times, and continues in use for some cultures. Curare, the poison extracted from Strychnos toxifera , and blowpipes are synonymous, and were a mainstay of travellers tales during the Victorian period, especially as the meat was still safe to eat. Poisons have been used to poison water and the fish within it, which is so much quicker, and easier, than fishing with a spear, bow, nets or line.

The fear of being murdered was constant for anybody with power throughout history. An assault of some kind is a very obvious way of removing somebody, but if you wanted to be subtler, poison was very useful. If the poison was administered carefully, perhaps nobody would ever know who the guilty person was. Poison has often been called the womans method of murder, or even that of the less muscular male, but in reality, it was too effective to be not made use of by anyone with ambition. It could be slipped in to a medicine whilst the victim was ill and perhaps most people would believe that the victim had succumbed to their illness. The usual method was to add the poison to the food, so an intermediary could be employed as a sacrificial victim.