Poison & Cure

How did a poison used to execute Socrates, an arrow toxin from the Amazon, and an ordeal bean from West Africa end up in modern hospitals?

Every plant in this book can kill. Hemlock silenced Socrates. Monkshood earned the name "queen of poisons." Ergot set medieval villages burning with St Anthony's fire. Yet almost every one of these plants has a second history, in which physicians and chemists learned what the poison did to the body and turned that knowledge into medicine.

Poison and Cure tells that story, from Athens in 399 BCE to the cancer wards of today:

• Foxglove and the heart: how William Withering learned to use a poison on the sickest patients in England
• Curare and surgery: how an Amazonian arrow poison made modern anesthesia possible
• The Calabar bean: how an ordeal poison became a lifeline for people with failing muscles
• Yew and periwinkle: how tree bark and a garden flower became cancer drugs
• The poison detectives: how chemists learned to find plant poisons hidden in the human body

Along the way it separates documented history from popular legend, and it explains the science in plain language.

A companion to Roots of Healing, and a gift for history lovers, gardeners, and anyone curious about where medicine came from.

Note: This is a history book. It contains no recipes or doses and is not medical advice.