Subject: Herbalism. (Was: Who came up with the idea...)

From: [email-masked] (David Adams)
Date: 7 Jan 93 09:26:27 CST

In article [email-masked], [email-masked] (Barry Shein) writes:
|
|The story on digitalis was that some African prince was at school at
|Oxford or Cambridge (UK.) He had some sort of condition but it never
|came up. One day (perhaps he ran out of his foxglove stash) he began
|ailing and getting very sick. He pleaded with the local doctors to
|contact his tribal "doctor" to get him some herb he needed. They
|scoffed but seeing as he was likely to die indulged him eventually.
|He got the herb and did whatever he did with it and was up on his feet
|in no time. So the doctors got interested.

I read quite a different story in "Rhodales Encyclopedia of Herbs", but
I would have to go look it up to recall it.  (That isn't to say that more
than one story can't be true.)  Would the African version of the foxglove 
be the same plant?

|Nightshade, btw, is a member of the belladona family (I forget the
|chemical name of the drug but something so awfully obvious I'm afraid
|I will get it wrong, strychnine??) as are potatos, tomatos and
|eggplants, tho the latter don't produce the drug (potatos do in their
|green portions, both meat and tops.) Contact cold pills used to
|contain belladona, not sure if they do anymore.

Isn't solanine the alkaloid in potatoes & tomatoes etc?  (I have the notion that
there are several alkaloids in the nightshade family--but I doubt that 
strychnine is one of them.)

---
--David C. Adams  Statistician  Cray Research Inc.  [email-masked]
___________________________________________________________________
       Old Sourdoughs never die.  They just ferment away.

---

From: [email-masked] (Mark Gooley)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:11:12 GMT

>than one story can't be true.)  Would the African version of the foxglove 

Rauwolfia, I believe.  And the guy was from India.

rau-wol-fia \rau.-'wu.l-fe^--e, ro[0xC7]-\ n
[NL, fr. Leonhard Rauwolf +1596 Ger. botanist]
(1752)
1: any of a large pantropic genus (Rauwolfia) of the dogbane family
     of somewhat poisonous trees and shrubs yielding emetic and purgative
     substances
2: a medicinal extract from the root of an Indian rauwolfia (Rauwolfia
     serpentina) used in the treatment of hypertension and mental
     disorders 

Mark., oh, it's terrible growing old
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