Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to this podcast Will Kill You Crossover Edition.
Speaker 2: I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm eron Aman Updank and this.
Speaker 1: Week we are joined by our good friend and fellow
Speaker 1: podcaster Matt Kindaeus.
Speaker 3: Say Hi, Matt, Hi, Matt, I should never have done that.
Speaker 3: I'm ashamed of myself already.
Speaker 1: No, it's perfect. So Matt is a fellow grad student
Speaker 1: and host of the incredible podcast In Defensive Plants. You, Matt,
Speaker 1: can you introduce yourself a bit and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what your podcast does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm Matt Candeis and I host In Defensive Plants.
Speaker 3: It is a weekly podcast that essentially is there to
Speaker 3: cure what we call plant blindness. And by we, I
Speaker 3: just mean people that like plants.
Speaker 1: We suffer from plant line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of the world does. And it's not
Speaker 3: a fault. It's just the way our species is programmed.
Speaker 3: But that's why the podcast exists, and I think that's
Speaker 3: the niche it's feeling, is to celebrate plants and get
Speaker 3: people excited, maybe not obsessed. You don't have to become
Speaker 3: obsessed with them, but excitement and just appreciate the botanical
Speaker 3: world because really we wouldn't be here without it, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, and everyone go and check it out in
Speaker 1: Defensive Plants.
Speaker 2: Well, especially because we're there's going to be another episode, yes,
Speaker 2: that will.
Speaker 3: Exist, because this is a crossover.
Speaker 1: Cross a reciprocal transplant where we're.
Speaker 2: Going to be on that podcast.
Speaker 3: That's what I do, that's what I study.
Speaker 1: So Matt's joining us this week and then upcoming we
Speaker 1: will be joining Matt on his podcast to talk about.
Speaker 2: Herbal lism things.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So there's a lot of i'll call it
Speaker 3: mysticism and folklore surrounding herbal remedies. And though I'm not
Speaker 3: a practicing herbalist, I know there's merit to some and
Speaker 3: a lot of misinformation about others. So who better to
Speaker 3: bring on than some disease ecologists to talk about the
Speaker 3: wild world of plant medicinals.
Speaker 1: So totally in our wheelhouse. We're gonna try, we'll research it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're smart people.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, exactly, that's literally our job. So Matt is
Speaker 2: here because this week, as we said, we're doing something
Speaker 2: a little bit different. This is part one of a
Speaker 2: crossover series on poison. We have at least a four
Speaker 2: part series I feel like we could expand it eventually too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but at a minimum, you've got a four part series
Speaker 2: and each week we're going to talk about a different
Speaker 2: poisonous plant. It's used throughout human history, the effects it
Speaker 2: actually has on your body, and then the evolutionary ecology
Speaker 2: of the plant, meaning why does it produce the compounds
Speaker 2: that make you sick.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be super duper fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so pumped. Yeah, I can't even contain. Like,
Speaker 3: we were messaging back and forth about this and I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm like, yes, I know.
Speaker 1: It was really hard to not go, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I guess I just learned. You have to know about this.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. Yeah, so very exciting.
Speaker 3: This allows me to stretch some muscles that I don't
Speaker 3: ever get to stretch. It's it's not a wheelhouse, I frequent.
Speaker 3: So thanks being open to this idea.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: We're pumped. Okay, So, because this is an episode of
Speaker 1: this podcast, will kill you. Guess what we have.
Speaker 2: A quarantine any time? A quarantiney time.
Speaker 1: What do we have this week?
Speaker 2: This week we're drinking the wolf Spin potion. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: we're talking about what plant.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a bunch of plants, but monkshood essentially in
Speaker 3: the genus acnodum.
Speaker 1: Fabulous, which also contains the plant wolf spain, right, or
Speaker 1: is that a different plant?
Speaker 3: Well? Was it the same plant?
Speaker 2: Plant blindness at work?
Speaker 3: Yeah, first, lesson common names are are kind of a
Speaker 3: pain In the end, a lot of plants can be
Speaker 3: called the same thing and be called many different things
Speaker 3: throughout different cultures. So essentially this is in the buttercup family.
Speaker 3: So the best example is a buttercup in the United
Speaker 3: States is different than a buttercup in England. But when
Speaker 3: you say wolf spain, you're generally referring to a group
Speaker 3: of plants in the genus acnodum. Or the monk SAIDs.
Speaker 1: Okay, fabulous, awesome. So but what is in the wolf
Speaker 1: Spain potion this week? Yeah? Is it's basically an aviation Yeah,
Speaker 1: which if you haven't heard of it, it's a really
Speaker 1: delicious drink.
Speaker 2: It's purple, it's beautiful, it's geuz.
Speaker 3: I just thought we could nail the jakes too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and and so we'll post the recipe and
Speaker 1: all that online along with some cool pictures.
Speaker 2: So what are chills we do need?
Speaker 1: Clink? There we go it was an okay sound, it
Speaker 1: wasn't quite crystal. But you know, now that that's out
Speaker 1: of the way, yep. Intro is over, I'll get started.
Speaker 1: So since we're doing a four parter on this topic,
Speaker 1: I figured I would kind of split the history of
Speaker 1: poisons into four parts, so Ancient, Middle Ages, Victorian, and modern.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's going to be how it
Speaker 1: ends up being. The boundaries are a little bit fluid,
Speaker 1: but in any case, this week I'll be talking about
Speaker 1: the ancient history of poisons, So who first decided to
Speaker 1: use them, how were they used, what was their reputation?
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to talk specifically about the history
Speaker 1: of the chosen poison of the week wolf Spain aka Aconite,
Speaker 1: aka Monkshood, et cetera. Turns out this beauty is not
Speaker 1: just the name of the werewolf Preventative and Harry Potter
Speaker 1: and are quarantiny. So what's the difference between a physician,
Speaker 1: a pretender, a magician and a poisoner? Ooh, The answer
Speaker 1: is that it depends. Those lines have always been blurred
Speaker 1: in the history of medicine and medicinal plants, many of
Speaker 1: which have a dual nature of healing. And harm, and
Speaker 1: those lines continue to be blurred in modern times, which
Speaker 1: is something we'll get to talk a lot more about
Speaker 1: in the herbal Medicine crossover episode. Yeah, but this week
Speaker 1: we're here to talk about poisons. The poisons have been
Speaker 1: around for I thought this was really cool, all of
Speaker 1: written human history dang d so Yeah, and also probably
Speaker 1: millennia before.
Speaker 3: That, I wouldn't done it. Yeah, I mean, you got
Speaker 3: to respect the fact that there's something there in human nature.
Speaker 3: You don't just invent writing and then start poisoning people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. That's the really interesting part because like, in
Speaker 1: order to determine what plants are poisonous, what plants are
Speaker 1: are helpful, what plants are food, it's going to involve
Speaker 1: a lot of trial and error, a lot of barfing,
Speaker 1: a lot of numb mouths, hallucinations and death along the way, and.
Speaker 3: A big plug for rampant Diary.
Speaker 1: I can't believe, thank you. How is anyone alive? Really
Speaker 1: the big question. Imagine that you're one of those early humans.
Speaker 1: You can't resort to Google like you can nowadays to
Speaker 1: tell you everything about a plant. You can't just watch
Speaker 1: what you eat, but you have to remember how it
Speaker 1: made you feel, and you didn't just rely on firsthand
Speaker 1: experience for this knowledge. If you saw a cluster of
Speaker 1: dead birds or foxes or something next to a bush
Speaker 1: filled with red berries, maybe you'd make a note not
Speaker 1: to keep those berries. We would hope, we yeah, one
Speaker 1: would hope and yeah. And then also, you know, if
Speaker 1: a friend told you about a digestive experience after feasting
Speaker 1: on a new salad creation, maybe you'd ask them to
Speaker 1: point out which plants they use, just like which taco
Speaker 1: bells to avoid, because there are good ones and bad ones,
Speaker 1: and the answers you should avoid them all. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we're.
Speaker 3: Weak, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: And before written language, this knowledge couldn't be stored in
Speaker 1: physical form. It had to be disseminated in a much
Speaker 1: different way through storytelling, from one village to another, from
Speaker 1: one generation to the next. And slowly this knowledge spread.
Speaker 1: But one person's knowledge is another person's weapon, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been long before someone would have snuck some
Speaker 1: parsley looking hemlock into their rivals side salad. The first
Speaker 1: written record words we have of the use of poisons
Speaker 1: comes from just a little bit after writing itself was
Speaker 1: thought to be invented so around five thousand years ago. Wow,
Speaker 1: And we see around that time descriptions of poisonous and
Speaker 1: medicinal plants pop up all over around the same time,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird in Egyptian papyri, Chinese and
Speaker 1: Indian texts, and Mesopotamian clay tablets.
Speaker 3: I mean, is it weird or is it just humans
Speaker 3: were doing that? And then they well, we might as
Speaker 3: well write this down.
Speaker 1: Well, and like what's more important than like we we
Speaker 1: need to eat every day a certain amount. We need
Speaker 1: to eat the things that we collect.
Speaker 2: And this is how you kill your enemies.
Speaker 1: Well, and this is.
Speaker 3: How you mean there's two families and enough food to
Speaker 3: support one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so sorry, you guys are going straight to the
Speaker 1: how to poison someone's section of that tablet, so our heads,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah so. And also, poisons featured prominently in
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman mythology, where it seems like the reputation
Speaker 1: of poison as a woman's weapon had taken hold, which
Speaker 1: is really fun. So Dianeira, the second wife of Heracles
Speaker 1: aka Hercules, killed him with a poisoned shirt for being
Speaker 1: unfaithful to her deserved it. Yeah, file that under stuff
Speaker 1: Disney left out of the movie, along with the fact
Speaker 1: that Hercules driven mad by Hara I Love I Love like.
Speaker 1: Disney did not tell you Hercules killed his first wife
Speaker 1: and children as you do. We'll get to that leader anyway.
Speaker 1: Side note hercules second wife, the one who killed him.
Speaker 1: Her name Dianira means man destroyer or destroyer of her husband.
Speaker 2: Okay, if I ever have kids, that's their name.
Speaker 1: Also in the Odyssey, Circe, which you know, she's got
Speaker 1: to be evil, right, we know everything, a goddess of
Speaker 1: magic uses mind altering drugs to turn all of Odysseus's
Speaker 1: men into pigs. Although to what end I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Just for fun, I'm bacon.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's really weird though, yeah, I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a reason for that. But jumping from myth into history,
Speaker 1: we see poisons play a huge role in the legal
Speaker 1: and political system of ancient Rome, which isn't as boring
Speaker 1: as it may sound. Poisons were widely used to carry
Speaker 1: out death sentences, and that's what happened with the famous
Speaker 1: philosophers Socrates. So he was convicted of moral corruption and impiety,
Speaker 1: and he was ordered to drink a hemlock infusion, and
Speaker 1: there's great paintings of this. There's one where he's like
Speaker 1: angrily in a I don't know bath sheet or toga.
Speaker 3: I assume same difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, my experience with toga is frat party only,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's gotta be a bath shoot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'll post some of those paintings because they're really fun.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: But from this time, which is around three hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety nine beasts see around that exact date, poisons seemed
Speaker 1: to become increasingly popular in ancient Rome. The Hippocratic oath.
Speaker 2: And I'm looking at you Someday.
Speaker 1: Written around then, includes the phrase neither will I administer
Speaker 1: a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor
Speaker 1: will I suggest such a course. Interesting. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that poisoning was a problem in physicians.
Speaker 3: But even then it goes back to what you originally
Speaker 3: said about blurred lines.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, how do you define meety poisonous?
Speaker 1: But it is it intent defines the poison.
Speaker 2: Really, this is philosophy question.
Speaker 1: I mean, too bad. Socrates was killed by a poison. Galen,
Speaker 1: who was another famous Greek physician and scholar, instructed doctors
Speaker 1: to collect herbs and prepare potions themselves rather than bying
Speaker 1: them at the market, where one plant could be sold
Speaker 1: under the wrong name, leading to a deadly quote mistake,
Speaker 1: and to protect themselves. Also, the wealthy hired tasters, which
Speaker 1: is one of the odder status symbols.
Speaker 2: They like to taste their food, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it became such a popular practice that there grew
Speaker 1: to be an official society of tasters. I don't know
Speaker 1: what union they did.
Speaker 3: Awesome?
Speaker 1: Yeah, did they protect your family if you died, that'd
Speaker 1: be great.
Speaker 2: Oh, good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know which.
Speaker 2: You're going to you've signed up for that.
Speaker 1: Well, But the thing is, like having a taster wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done much good, probably because if you were going
Speaker 1: to poison someone, you wouldn't choose a fast acting poison
Speaker 1: because that would be very obvious, particularly if someone had
Speaker 1: a taster, and you would also probably be more accumulative poison.
Speaker 2: Well, you could do fast acting poison as long as
Speaker 2: no one knew it was you that put it in
Speaker 2: the food, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, if your intent was to kill
Speaker 1: your target and the person had a taster, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, they had to have a delay because the
Speaker 1: person is going to be way too hungry.
Speaker 3: They don't. I mean, come on, if your poison subject
Speaker 3: has a taster.
Speaker 1: We're not telling you how to poison someone.
Speaker 2: But we're just telling you.
Speaker 1: But if we're talking hypothetical to here everyone. So anyway,
Speaker 1: poisonings happened frequently, and as per usual, the law had
Speaker 1: to catch up with the popular trends. Eventually, cultivating certain
Speaker 1: poisonous plants became a capital offense, really a capital offense,
Speaker 1: and entire legal institutions were responsible for dishing out punishments
Speaker 1: for poisoners.
Speaker 3: Wow, as a gardener, that upsets me.
Speaker 1: Why the cultivation side of it?
Speaker 3: I want to get arrested. Well, I guess there's still
Speaker 3: our plants. I could get arrested, but.
Speaker 2: In Illinois no one should come after my mom.
Speaker 3: Said, don't tread on my monk's hood.
Speaker 2: Don't tread on my monk's head.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's funny. So yeah, these entire legal
Speaker 1: institutions were responsible for dishing out punishments for poisoners, and
Speaker 1: those punishments weren't far from the crime itself. At one point,
Speaker 1: in three hundred and thirty one BC, a whole slew
Speaker 1: of women one hundred and seventy actually.
Speaker 3: Were the unit of one hundred and seventy women is
Speaker 3: one slu It's kind of like sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Three pecks. No one and a half bushels were Anyway,
Speaker 1: these these poor Slough were accused, tried, and convicted of
Speaker 1: mass poisoning of men, husbands, lovers, people who stood in
Speaker 1: their way, et cetera. And during the trial some were
Speaker 1: told to drink their prepared potions as proof of innocence.
Speaker 1: As I've said, there's a line between poison and medicine,
Speaker 1: with dosage as one of the deciding factors. And all
Speaker 1: the women died whoops, or were put to death.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, though poisons continued to be used in battle, whether
Speaker 1: through poison tipped arrows or intentionally contamining water supplies, which
Speaker 1: did happen multiple times, they maintained their reputation as a
Speaker 1: woman's choice for murder. And in fact, the star of
Speaker 1: today's episode, Aconite, was referred to as stepmother's poison or
Speaker 1: the mother in law's poison. So poison has his reputation
Speaker 1: for being a woman's weapon, right, and some women leaned
Speaker 1: into this, making lives for themselves as professional poisoners. She's
Speaker 1: a witch or poison consultants.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, yeah, it's a good business card.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's great. So Lacusta, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's how you say her name. Lc Usta was a
Speaker 1: former slave turned consultant for Nero, Roman Emperor. Nero later emperor,
Speaker 1: who was so thirsty for the emperor physition seriously, and
Speaker 1: so she helped him kill the current emperor, Claudius's son,
Speaker 1: and then helped Claudius's wife to kill Claudius himself, clearing
Speaker 1: the path for Nero. And with the fall of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, the field of poisoning, toxicology, and medicinal plants,
Speaker 1: both in research and practice, seem to retreat to the
Speaker 1: shadows in that part of the world, but it would
Speaker 1: continue to be built upon and much expanded by physicians
Speaker 1: and scientists like Avicenna in the Islamic Golden Age. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so early history of poisons check, we're done.
Speaker 1: But where does aconite fit into all of this? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: to answer that, we're going to dive back into some
Speaker 1: mythology briefly. Are you ready for this?
Speaker 2: Always?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: All right, Let's take a trip back to the summer
Speaker 1: before tenth grade. I don't want to do this my
Speaker 1: tenth grade. So in between doing really cool hip things
Speaker 1: like rereading Harry Potter one through five, I worked on
Speaker 1: my summer assignment, Edith Hamilton's Mythology. So Edith Hamilton's Mythology
Speaker 1: and Harry Potter is where my love for Harry Potter
Speaker 1: met my love for trivia and origin stories.
Speaker 3: You do love those things. Every movie I've ever watched
Speaker 3: with this Aaron usually has a segment for trivia somewhere
Speaker 3: between halfway through, and.
Speaker 1: That's why we love her, all right, So this is
Speaker 1: basically when I read Edith Hamilton, I learned about Cerberus,
Speaker 1: who was the three headed dog that guarded the entrance
Speaker 1: to the underworld and served as inspiration for all Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got a girl.
Speaker 2: Fluffy was the dog that guarded the place where they
Speaker 2: kept the Philosopher's Stone, the Sorcerer's Stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least somewhere along that pathway exactly, you got
Speaker 1: it anyway, So I was really excited to see that
Speaker 1: crossover there. Okay, so it turns out that Hercules. Remember
Speaker 1: I was gonna I told you that we were going
Speaker 1: to circle back to this in order to repent for
Speaker 1: killing his wife and kids the first time. The first
Speaker 1: time his first wife and his five kids. I think five? Whoa,
Speaker 1: it was okay if you killed two. I mean five
Speaker 1: just seems extreme, doesn't it. He was crazy by Hara
Speaker 1: who else? Yeah, Well, in order to repent for this,
Speaker 1: he had to perform various feats of strength, including capturing
Speaker 1: Cerberus and bringing him to the surface. While he was
Speaker 1: up there, Cerberus got off foamy mouthed because he wasn't
Speaker 1: used to sunlight. Rabies sound like rabies.
Speaker 2: Teas and water spoilers, It's going to be our first
Speaker 2: episode of ease in two. Everybody get excited.
Speaker 1: In any case, Cerberus's spit flew everywhere and where it landed,
Speaker 1: Aconite grew, and from these humble beginnings, aconite gained a
Speaker 1: reputation as one of the deadliest poisons in ancient times
Speaker 1: seriously forking, deadly wow, Yeah Heckeate goddess of witchcraft, and
Speaker 1: also in Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of the wishes discovered its
Speaker 1: use as a poison, and Greek shepherds would smear aconite
Speaker 1: juice on arrows or mix the plant with raw meat
Speaker 1: to protect their sheep from wolves. Hence, the name wolves Spain.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they would put it on so that the
Speaker 2: wolves would die it with the Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So like a lot of what I what I learned
Speaker 1: in some of this, like reading about ancients, is that
Speaker 1: anything with wood after it, if it was wormwood used
Speaker 1: to treat worms, Hen's bane wolf Spain. You are trying
Speaker 1: to kill whatever? So what ishood you trying to kill?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, months.
Speaker 2: Which we'll get to see. I haven't looked at any.
Speaker 3: Pictures yet, which I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Other species in the aconite genus have been used
Speaker 1: to poison arrows in Japan, in the Himalayas, in China,
Speaker 1: and in Alaska, so all over. Basically on one Greek island,
Speaker 1: aconite was put in the drinks of old men when
Speaker 1: they were quote no longer of use to the community.
Speaker 1: Early references to aconite emphasize it's extremely potent nature. If
Speaker 1: you were going to use aconite, you should be wearing
Speaker 1: protective clothing while gardening and avoid breathing in any of
Speaker 1: the aconite powder during preparation.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Oh, preparation for poisons apparently continue to this day.
Speaker 2: Yes, well absolutely, I can't wait to hear more about
Speaker 2: the plant. Itself.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, I'll get to it. Then aaronski use me.
Speaker 1: That was just a I'm excited, okay, yeah, where the
Speaker 1: smell of the plant alone was thought to be strong
Speaker 1: enough to cause illness or death.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the way, though, the language around aconite changed.
Speaker 1: It turned from poison to medicine. You name it, aconite,
Speaker 1: will treat it, seemed to be the motto, and that
Speaker 1: happened around the mid seventeen hundreds. It was prescribed by
Speaker 1: many doctors when a good sweat was needed. This is
Speaker 1: back when the ancient concept of various bodily humors still
Speaker 1: held sway in the medical field. Oddly enough, aconite didn't
Speaker 1: prove to be a particularly rely liable or safe treatment
Speaker 1: and gradually fell out of favor in the medical community
Speaker 1: after the treatment didn't agree with one too many patients.
Speaker 3: And by agree, we mean like it killed one too
Speaker 3: many patients.
Speaker 1: Thank you, exactly exactly. But that didn't mark the end
Speaker 1: for aconite. Where it initially failed to gain support in
Speaker 1: the Orthodox medical community, it found in homeopathy. Under the
Speaker 1: concept of like cures. Like drugs such as aconite were
Speaker 1: used to treat diseases which had similar symptoms. Aconite was
Speaker 1: used for acute diseases, especially those characterized by fever and pain.
Speaker 1: It gained reputation as a substitute for blood letting. Probably
Speaker 1: it's treating one evil for another poisoning, right, I mean
Speaker 1: you know which. In these times, people were always looking
Speaker 1: for an excuse to bloodlet Apparently, aconite were best on
Speaker 1: fearful nervous patients and to calm and it was used
Speaker 1: to calm women down during nasty periods, the ultimate all
Speaker 1: your period.
Speaker 2: You might, you might, you might, Maybe I need to
Speaker 2: calm myself down during my rageful period.
Speaker 3: She's raging, very paging.
Speaker 1: I should mention, though, that the actual amount of aconite
Speaker 1: in many of these remedies was so teeny tiny small
Speaker 1: that it was negligible. Homeopaths were publishing on aconite left
Speaker 1: and right, and around the mid eighteen hundreds, orthodox physicians
Speaker 1: started paying attention, which is kind of interesting. Aconite in
Speaker 1: certain carefully measured doses seem to be effective as a
Speaker 1: neural suppressant, meaning a drug that inhibits activity of parts
Speaker 1: of the nervous system, particularly in controlling inflammation. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna stop on your toes.
Speaker 3: Don't worry.
Speaker 2: I'll talk so much more about it.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, I love it. But so when when it was
Speaker 1: found to actually have these effects, it became all the rage.
Speaker 1: So throughout the eighteen hundreds and into the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: aconite or aconite mixed with other things like chloroform and belladonna.
Speaker 1: Oh good lord, yep was used as a painkiller or
Speaker 1: to treat infection, lung conditions, nerve pain, and so on.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The adoption of aconite by Orthodox physicians from homeopathy was
Speaker 1: also a big deal. But we're still talking about a
Speaker 1: poison here. And just because something alters your physiology in
Speaker 1: a way that does not kill or name, does not
Speaker 1: make it good for you. Word yea. And so we
Speaker 1: circle back to the question I pose at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this what is the difference between a physician and
Speaker 1: a pretender, a magician, a poisoner? Yeah, the answer lies
Speaker 1: somewhere between ignorance and intent. So, Aaron, tell us what
Speaker 1: exactly does aconite do that makes it a poison? All right?
Speaker 2: Let me tell you about wolf, spain, monkshood, et cetera.
Speaker 2: All right, So, yeah, these plants, because we know there's
Speaker 2: multiples contain a compound called a conatine. This is the
Speaker 2: compound that actually makes you sick. And later in just
Speaker 2: a few minutes, because I'm gonna be quick, Matt is
Speaker 2: going to tell you about why these plants actually contain
Speaker 2: this compound. To begin with, like, what's the point of
Speaker 2: having something that kills people in you as a plant tissue?
Speaker 1: Which is a really fun question I can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear about.
Speaker 2: But first let me tell you so that I have
Speaker 2: a point to being here, what actually happens to your
Speaker 2: body when you ingest this plant? Like, what is actually
Speaker 2: making you sick?
Speaker 3: When you go out on a limb and say it's not.
Speaker 2: Pleasant, it's not at all? Okay, So a conotine affects
Speaker 2: a bunch of different parts of your body, but the
Speaker 2: effects that are most important are what it has on
Speaker 2: both your heart tissue and your nervous system. But the
Speaker 2: effects are pretty widespread. So it can affect your GI tract,
Speaker 2: your nervous system, your heart. It has a pretty widespread effect.
Speaker 2: So what actually happens when you take a bite of
Speaker 2: wolf spain for example, or you take a pill that
Speaker 2: someone gave you that's like full of it, sip just
Speaker 2: a sip of a tincture or something. Right within a
Speaker 2: really short amount of time, like as little as ten
Speaker 2: minutes or maximum like two hours. Whoa, right, it's really
Speaker 2: fast acting. You'll start to see symptoms that include numbness
Speaker 2: in your face or limbs, periestiesia, which is a fancy
Speaker 2: word for you feel a tingling or a burning sensation.
Speaker 2: Could be until it's not. You might have some muscle weakness.
Speaker 2: You'll become hypotensive, which means your blood pressure drops really low.
Speaker 1: That's not good. It's never good.
Speaker 2: And then your heart, and this is important, it might
Speaker 2: begin to race really fast, or it might slow way
Speaker 2: way way down.
Speaker 3: I don't like that.
Speaker 2: It could go either way.
Speaker 1: It could go either way.
Speaker 3: It could go that's the scariest or not. You've poisoned.
Speaker 1: Talk a lot about it.
Speaker 2: You don't worry. Flip a coin, Flip a coin. No,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about why don't worry.
Speaker 1: This is why I don't wild forage.
Speaker 2: That's a good reason not to. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that, you might also have things like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.
Speaker 3: Of course, you sound like I was gonna say, na.
Speaker 1: Diarrhea.
Speaker 2: Yep, all of that, all of that if you manage
Speaker 2: to get to a hospital and you don't die, if
Speaker 2: it's possible and you get to a hospital, the good
Speaker 2: news is that within twenty four hours you'll probably be
Speaker 2: fine because this is very fast acting. But it's also
Speaker 2: it's a pretty quick recovery, so it has a very
Speaker 2: short half life in your body, right. Your body digests
Speaker 2: it very quickly. But and I didn't look up enough
Speaker 2: to detail probably about the actual mortality rate, but at
Speaker 2: least in this article that I found, even in hospital cases,
Speaker 2: the mortality rate is over five percent. So even if
Speaker 2: you manage to get to the hospital and get treatment,
Speaker 2: you still have an over five percent chance of dying.
Speaker 1: Well, so that's that's really interesting because that mortality rate
Speaker 1: would have to do with modern cases. So, yeah, intentional
Speaker 1: poisoning or I ate way too much of this really
Speaker 1: weird thing.
Speaker 2: Well, but also which happens, it's also a very common
Speaker 2: thing that's used in a lot of herbal remedies.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, I was going to ask you about the
Speaker 1: current status of acne idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it is definitely a thing, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of information out there about what people tend
Speaker 2: to do to treat this either the leaves or the
Speaker 2: roots that they're using in order to make it less
Speaker 2: toxic but still have less Yes, exactly, I think you'll
Speaker 2: you'll probably talk more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and and the fact that this is a crossover,
Speaker 3: this is a subject will be covering probably a little
Speaker 3: bit more.
Speaker 1: Next week, exactly.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so it's it is still very commonly used
Speaker 2: in a lot of sort of traditional medicine type things. Okay,
Speaker 2: So here's the question, though, How on earth can just
Speaker 2: eating a plant cause so many different symptoms, everything from
Speaker 2: numbness or muscle weakness to the general cause of death
Speaker 2: is actually heart failure. Your heart just fully stops, it
Speaker 2: can't handle it, it gives out.
Speaker 1: That's terrifying.
Speaker 2: So how can a plant actually cause something that a
Speaker 2: lot of these symptoms, nausea, muscle weakness, these seem very disparate, right,
Speaker 2: So the question is systems, right, what on earth is happening?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you I didn't.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, go ahead and google it. Here's what happens.
Speaker 2: The major compound that's in these plants, a conatine, attacks
Speaker 2: your sodium channels. Here's what you need to know to
Speaker 2: understand how this compound, a conatine actually affects your system.
Speaker 2: Number one. You all know hopefully that your nervous system
Speaker 2: is generally in charge of your body, right. It sends
Speaker 2: signals to different parts of your body that say things
Speaker 2: like contract this muscle or release this hormone.
Speaker 3: Et cetera, go to the bathroom now exactly.
Speaker 2: So the way that it sends these signals is by
Speaker 2: moving ions, which just means a charge molecule across membranes. Okay, Sodium,
Speaker 2: which is a positive ion, is one of the most
Speaker 2: important things involved in sending these signals. So sodium tends
Speaker 2: to be really high in concentration outside of cells and
Speaker 2: lower inside of cells with me, so far, sure, great.
Speaker 2: So the other ion that's important is potassium. Potassium is
Speaker 2: higher inside of cells and lower.
Speaker 1: Outside of the opposite of sodium.
Speaker 2: Exactly, sodium outside, potassium inside, and overall, the insides of
Speaker 2: your cells are negatively charged compared to the outside.
Speaker 1: Of your cells.
Speaker 2: Did not know that.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 2: We're learning new things, all right. So ions, these charged
Speaker 2: molecules cannot cross your cellular membranes because they're charged, and
Speaker 2: your cell membranes are basically fat globules.
Speaker 3: Okay, more than my cell membranes.
Speaker 2: So these charged molecules can't cross the fat. They don't
Speaker 2: like each other. Okay, So the way that they cross
Speaker 2: is by channels, which are like doors that open and
Speaker 2: close and allow these ions to cross this membrane with
Speaker 2: me mm hm totally excellent. So the way that your
Speaker 2: nervous system actually sends these signals to tell everything else
Speaker 2: in your body what to do is by propagating what
Speaker 2: we call action potentials, which basically just means that they
Speaker 2: open a channel and it's a channel that is specific
Speaker 2: to sodium, which we know is at high concentrations outside
Speaker 2: of your cell, and then a bunch of sodium rushes
Speaker 2: into the cell. And then they close that channel and
Speaker 2: they're like, okay, now we've got a bunch of sodium
Speaker 2: inside of the cell. And then they open another channel
Speaker 2: and they're like potassium, it's your turn, and potassium rushes
Speaker 2: out of the cell.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So that is how they propagate these signals, is they go.
Speaker 1: That's how it transfers down exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's you, for example, you touch something that's hot,
Speaker 2: right and your skin feel that and it's like this
Speaker 2: thing is hot. So then that sends a signal that
Speaker 2: says sodium go, and then your sodium channels open, sodium
Speaker 2: rushes into your cells. Those doors close, and then the
Speaker 2: open ones that say potassium, it's your turn, potassium rushes out,
Speaker 2: et cetera. You can google some really great YouTube videos
Speaker 2: of this, but.
Speaker 3: Essentially what you're saying is this is holding to the
Speaker 3: whole universal constant of things move from high to low
Speaker 3: concentrations precisely mad and so I did something another.
Speaker 1: And so this means that if you touch that hot stove,
Speaker 1: that action potential or that that whole sequence of events
Speaker 1: is telling you right or is allowing you to move
Speaker 1: or telling you to move right.
Speaker 2: So it tells your nervous system something bad is happening here.
Speaker 2: That action potential travels all the way down your nerve
Speaker 2: to your brain, which goes something's bad is happening. It
Speaker 2: travels all the way back to your muscles, which go
Speaker 2: move and then you move.
Speaker 1: So it's like a two two parallel domino system going
Speaker 1: in a direction.
Speaker 2: Right, and it happens instantaneously.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So these sodium channels have to be able to open
Speaker 2: and close extremely rapidly for these signals to be able
Speaker 2: to propagate. So that you can do literally anything, right. Okay,
Speaker 2: So sodium channels are really really important in you literally
Speaker 2: being able to survive, right, So what's the point of
Speaker 2: me telling you all this? Why did I just give
Speaker 2: you like an intro to physiology?
Speaker 3: I have my suspicions.
Speaker 2: As it turns out, a conatine, the compound that's in
Speaker 2: Monk's hood wolf span et cetera, binds to sodium channels
Speaker 2: and it forces them to stay open.
Speaker 1: No, oh, that's not good.
Speaker 2: It's not good. So what happens is you end up
Speaker 2: with a huge influx of sodium that comes into the cell,
Speaker 2: but then you can't close that channel in order to
Speaker 2: continue to propagate the signal. Right, So that means that
Speaker 2: anytime you get a future signal, you can't react to
Speaker 2: it because your sodium channels are already open. Oh I
Speaker 2: love that was such a good reaction.
Speaker 1: Understanding is dawning.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what does this mean in real life? So
Speaker 2: you take a big bite of wolf spain and you're
Speaker 2: chewing on it, and now your sodium channels are It's
Speaker 2: a nightmare. What's happening in your nervous system. You're not
Speaker 2: getting any new signals being passed. You have this one
Speaker 2: giant influx of sodium, and then that's it. You can't
Speaker 2: make any new signals because your sodium channels are stuck
Speaker 2: in the open position. They can't basically reset themselves, which
Speaker 2: they have to do to be able to detect a
Speaker 2: new signal.
Speaker 3: So it's like you're trying to get a call, but
Speaker 3: every time you pick up the phone so much just screaming. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But like back in the old days when they was
Speaker 2: like a busy signal because someone left your phone off the.
Speaker 1: Old the old days, Like.
Speaker 2: That's a great it's just like that, yep. So that's
Speaker 2: why you end up with things like numbness or tingling
Speaker 2: because your nerves are not propagating signals the way that
Speaker 2: they're supposed to exactly well, not not really hyper firing.
Speaker 2: They're not able to pick up any new signals.
Speaker 1: So the way, But then the.
Speaker 2: Question is why is this affecting your heart? Right, because
Speaker 2: like that's weird, Except it's not that weird because it
Speaker 2: turns out your heart doesn't actually need any nervous input
Speaker 2: in order to beat. So you can take a heart
Speaker 2: out of a human body and it will still beat.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. And that's because your heart actually generates its
Speaker 2: own action potentials, right, It's very cool. And the way
Speaker 2: that it does that is a very similar mechanism to
Speaker 2: your nervous system. It's the same sodium channels, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So that means exactly if you're opening the sodium channels
Speaker 2: in your nervous system, you're also opening them in your
Speaker 2: heart cells. And so your heart cells normally all communicate
Speaker 2: with each other almost simultaneously, and that's why your heart
Speaker 2: beats as if it's one thing.
Speaker 3: Right. I never knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bunch of little cells, right, but they
Speaker 2: communicate with each other so seamlessly that your heart can
Speaker 2: beat as if it's one thing, even though it's these
Speaker 2: billions of little cells. So when you open a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of sodium channels, that screws everything up. So you
Speaker 2: can end up with what we call fibrillations, which means
Speaker 2: your heart is no longer beating in sync with each other.
Speaker 2: Different fibers are firing at different times. It's not good.
Speaker 2: You also can end up with your heart not being
Speaker 2: able to beat as effect because these sodium channels are open,
Speaker 2: so it can't Again, just like your nervous system get
Speaker 2: a new signal to tell it to beat right, so
Speaker 2: that would slow your heart rate down. Oh, exactly right.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, though, your heart doesn't need nervous
Speaker 2: input in order to beat. The nervous system. Your central
Speaker 2: nervous system, like your brain, controls via what's called your
Speaker 2: fagus nerve, how fast your heart beats, so it can
Speaker 2: tell your heart if you're scared or something, it'll say
Speaker 2: beat a little quicker if this is scary, or if
Speaker 2: everything is okay, it'll say just relax man, beat a
Speaker 2: little slower. So that nervous system is impaired, and it
Speaker 2: actually blocks your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest
Speaker 2: and digest nervous system, so it blocks the signals that
Speaker 2: are telling your heart. A conatine specifically, is blocking the
Speaker 2: part of your nervous system that tells your heart chill out,
Speaker 2: everything is fine, which makes your heart beat faster.
Speaker 3: So it's which everyone wins out in that battle. Wow.
Speaker 2: Right, So that's why you can have all these various
Speaker 2: cardiac symptoms. You can have fibrillations your heart's not beating
Speaker 2: in sync. You can have Brady cardia your heart's beating
Speaker 2: too slowly. You can have taca cardia. Your heart's beating
Speaker 2: too quickly, and literally all of this is because of
Speaker 2: its effect on sodium channels.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting, I know. So the I'm like, how
Speaker 1: if someone might be jumping the gun, but like, if
Speaker 1: someone had aconite poisoning.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, how would you know great that it was aconite?
Speaker 2: And it's a really great question. And so I will
Speaker 2: say that from what I've read, I have no like
Speaker 2: because I'm gonna be a future physician, right, Like, I
Speaker 2: have no idea how you would diagnose this. I I
Speaker 2: I want to ask some does anyone know who works
Speaker 2: in like an er It sounds like, okay, they've told
Speaker 2: us so far that one of the most important things
Speaker 2: that you can do as a physician is get a
Speaker 2: really good history. And I think that this is the
Speaker 2: type of thing that you would really be able to
Speaker 2: diagnose based on history if someone said they ate something weird,
Speaker 2: or they took these pills, or they're a forager exactly.
Speaker 2: So this is the type of thing that it's really
Speaker 2: important to talk to your patient or talk to a
Speaker 2: person and get that history from them, because yeah, the
Speaker 2: symptoms are kind of all over the place, and they
Speaker 2: can be so varied, but at the end, what you
Speaker 2: die from is your heart just basically giving out.
Speaker 1: That's a really sad I know.
Speaker 3: And this is why when people say plants are boring,
Speaker 3: I just want to slap Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's terrify.
Speaker 3: That is terrifying.
Speaker 2: So then the question is why on earth do these
Speaker 2: plants make this compound to begin with? Like, what's the point?
Speaker 2: Are they just trying to kill people? Do plants hate people? Yeah?
Speaker 3: They do, that's all it is. Actually, they despite being
Speaker 3: around for many millions of years before we even came
Speaker 3: onto the scene, they had it out for us. They
Speaker 3: knew it was coming.
Speaker 1: Listen, Matt, it's all about us.
Speaker 2: Emolition has a point and is predicted.
Speaker 3: It's hierarchical, it's directed. No, and that's a really good question,
Speaker 3: and I'm really happy to be here to talk about
Speaker 3: that because it's something I hold near and dear to
Speaker 3: my heart. But I think with all this talk about
Speaker 3: the plants, it would be worth kind of mentioning what
Speaker 3: these plants are and what they look like. And to
Speaker 3: do that, I think you might have noticed this ginormous,
Speaker 3: unnecessarily large book I brought This is called The Illustrated
Speaker 3: Treasury of Cultivated Flowers by Anderson Beautiful Illustrations, and there's
Speaker 3: a whole section on monkshood or the econon of genus.
Speaker 3: And it's because they are extremely popular till this day
Speaker 3: horticultural specimens. I mean I can count four or five
Speaker 3: houses within a few blocks of where I live that
Speaker 3: have them prolifically seeding into their gardens. It's still extremely popular.
Speaker 3: So I figured I would bring this book to show
Speaker 3: both of you because one of you at least had
Speaker 3: mentioned you hadn't googled what the plant looked like.
Speaker 1: California Air and California.
Speaker 3: But essentially these are perennial plants, so they come back
Speaker 3: year after year from mountainous regions around the globe. There's
Speaker 3: about two hundred and fifty different species of them, and
Speaker 3: they all have these beautiful what they call palmately compound leaves.
Speaker 3: So essentially what that means is the stem of the
Speaker 3: leaf comes up like your wrist and attaches to your hand.
Speaker 3: And if you picture the dissection on these leaves, they're
Speaker 3: like a hand with just over twenty fingers. It's just
Speaker 3: a very dissected thing with a single attachment point. Your
Speaker 3: palm would be ly palmately compound. But the real showstopper
Speaker 3: about these plants are their flowers. Right, So you get
Speaker 3: these tall spikes, and I mean tall. These plants can
Speaker 3: come up to about my chin and I'm I'm not
Speaker 3: a tall person by any means, but you know, four
Speaker 3: or five feet tall is pretty big for an earth
Speaker 3: and some can get taller. But their real selling point
Speaker 3: is their flowers, and these are gorgeous plants. They are
Speaker 3: popular for a reason, and their flower color ranges from
Speaker 3: yellows to deep purples. But essentially the name monkshood comes
Speaker 3: from the fact that their petals are highly derived for
Speaker 3: bee pollination, so kind of setting up the stage for
Speaker 3: the shape of a bee to come and visit their flowers,
Speaker 3: and two of the petals come up to the top
Speaker 3: and form a hood over the reproductive parts. So it
Speaker 3: kind of looks like a beautiful blue night wearing a
Speaker 3: hoodie a blue They're gorgeous plants, right, I mean, this
Speaker 3: is a beautiful picture. This is of a Conodum neapelus.
Speaker 3: But there's plenty of others. Like I said, there's about
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty different species in these plants. Now,
Speaker 3: it's worth mentioning that they are members of the buttercup family,
Speaker 3: and most of that family, which is Ronunki lacy, have
Speaker 3: a lot of alkaloids. They're known for their alkaloid production,
Speaker 3: and they're toxic. They're very toxic, and for good reason.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that. But the wolf Spain we've probably
Speaker 3: been most referring to is acnonym lacoctinum, and that one's
Speaker 3: native to most of Europe and northern Asia. So that's
Speaker 3: the one that most of what you know, White European
Speaker 3: history would have probably been writing about. But that's not
Speaker 3: to say that there aren't others. Like I said, this
Speaker 3: is a genus of two hundred and fifty give or
Speaker 3: take species, all of them extremely toxic to humans. There's
Speaker 3: also within the guys of herbalism wolf Spain, there is
Speaker 3: econonym Cosmanthemum or sorry, casmanthem There's econonym heterophyllum and econonym violaceum.
Speaker 3: And these are all largely Himalayan in their distribution, so India, Pakistan, Nepal,
Speaker 3: and I think a little bit into Iraq, but I
Speaker 3: could be mistaken about that. And they have been very
Speaker 3: important in all of those cultures. So you talked a
Speaker 3: lot about the history, but essentially all of the history
Speaker 3: you gave has been used in various cures throughout history.
Speaker 3: So more than one group of humans stumbled on to
Speaker 3: the fact that you eat these and you're going to
Speaker 3: be in tough shape.
Speaker 2: You can kill your enemies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3: Mentioned econodine, right, and that's really the one that a
Speaker 3: lot of people focus on with wolf Spain. But it's
Speaker 3: worth mentioning that they produce lots of alkaloids. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't even talk about all the they all act
Speaker 2: in similar ways, but yeah, I didn't even mention all
Speaker 2: the other name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and alcoholtes come in many forms, but in the
Speaker 3: context that we're talking about tonight, they're what we call
Speaker 3: secondary metabolites and plants, and what that means is that
Speaker 3: these are compounds that plants produce that aren't involved in
Speaker 3: growth and reproduction. Oh okay, so secondary right.
Speaker 1: Purpose?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, whatever, it's secondary compounds are largely defense compounds,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of different ways a plant can
Speaker 3: go to defend itself, and you got to think about
Speaker 3: it from a plant's perspective, right, They're not animals they
Speaker 3: can't run from danger. Plants are stuck where they are.
Speaker 3: For the most part. There's exceptions to that rule. For
Speaker 3: anyone listening that's a plant person here, we don't need
Speaker 3: to talk about those. But yeah, if you're stuck in
Speaker 3: a place and you're a tasty, nitrogen filled plant, things
Speaker 3: are gonna want to eat you, and you, in the
Speaker 3: plant sense, are going to need to defend yourself. And
Speaker 3: one of the many ways that plants do that are
Speaker 3: through very toxic chemical compounds, and that's where most of
Speaker 3: secondary metabolites come in. When we talk about the collagen
Speaker 3: survival of plant species. They're to either make you so
Speaker 3: distasteful that nothing wants to eat you, or if something
Speaker 3: makes that mistake, it's the last mistake it ever makes.
Speaker 1: Very cool, Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3: The thing to keep in mind about alkaloids is that
Speaker 3: they're nitrogen rich compounds. So these are usually plants that
Speaker 3: come from good soils, right and so acononym is largely
Speaker 3: a plant species in the northern hemisphere that's native to
Speaker 3: temperate areas, mountainous areas, but generally pretty rich soil types.
Speaker 3: Because it takes a lot to produce these compounds, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't need to do it, or evolutionaries speaking, why
Speaker 3: would you produce them if you didn't have to, right,
Speaker 3: And the amount of energy and vital compounds that go
Speaker 3: into making them kind of leeds into the fact that
Speaker 3: they are very necessary for these plants long term survival.
Speaker 3: So the big thing with these plants is that they
Speaker 3: just simply don't want to be eaten. And that's what's
Speaker 3: amazing about plant compounds, and that's something that humans have
Speaker 3: used for centuries, is the fact that the compounds that
Speaker 3: they're producing have to be biologically active. And this is
Speaker 3: why I love your idea of like it's all in
Speaker 3: the dose, right, what's a poison and what's a medicine? Well,
Speaker 3: how much are you taking and why are you taking it? Right?
Speaker 3: And that's key to this is that these plants don't
Speaker 3: want to be eaten. Plants are trying to kill whatever's
Speaker 3: eating them, or at least make them never want to
Speaker 3: eat it again. And that's where these alkaloids start to
Speaker 3: come into place. So ecologically, evolutionarily speaking, these are all
Speaker 3: defense compounds, at least in the context of this. There's
Speaker 3: probably other functions that we don't quite understand yet, because again,
Speaker 3: the science is truly in its infancy in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. But it's fascinating to think about what these
Speaker 3: plants are doing just to keep things from butting off pieces.
Speaker 3: And that brings up a really good point here, is
Speaker 3: that there's variations in the composition and concentration between species,
Speaker 3: between individuals within a species, and even between parts of
Speaker 3: the same plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big thing I saw when they
Speaker 2: were like talking about people that use this in different remedies,
Speaker 2: was like, are you using the.
Speaker 1: Root or the stem or the leaves?
Speaker 2: Does it also does the species variation? Does that depend
Speaker 2: on like what organism is the primary consumer of that plant?
Speaker 3: It's very much can. So you will often see plants
Speaker 3: that get into areas where, say islands, where there aren't
Speaker 3: large predators or mammals, don't make it too quite easily. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you still have to deal with your insect constituency, but
Speaker 3: you see kind of a reduction on a lot of compounds,
Speaker 3: because why would you produce something if you didn't have to?
Speaker 3: These are expensive products to produce, so why.
Speaker 2: Make something that's strong enough to kill a mammal if
Speaker 2: all you have to kill is like a grasshopper? Right,
Speaker 2: which it probably it doesn't take nearly the concentration or
Speaker 2: whatever to kill a grasshopper as.
Speaker 1: It was into the whole energy budget. Yeah, one, am
Speaker 1: I spending my energy.
Speaker 2: On this is so fun?
Speaker 3: Yes, I know. I love that the ecology side is
Speaker 3: coming out right now. Yeah, but exactly, you've hit the
Speaker 3: nail on the head, and we'll talk about insects and
Speaker 3: just that evolutionary arms race in which you get around
Speaker 3: those sorts of things. But again, all of these are
Speaker 3: to deter herbivores to any extent possible. Yeah, So as
Speaker 3: far that we know from what we've been able to
Speaker 3: establish at this point of the fifty four phytochemically investigated
Speaker 3: species of ecnodom So essentially that's just saying of the
Speaker 3: fifty four species that we've decided to analyze the chemical composition,
Speaker 3: they all contain a connoteam like alkaloids, which are neurotoxic,
Speaker 3: as we decided cardiotoxic from mammals and insects. And it's
Speaker 3: important to note that you're talking about sodium channels right raid.
Speaker 3: Our favorite b spray also opens up those sodium channels
Speaker 3: and that's the way in which it works.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, these sodium channels are highly conserved across
Speaker 2: evolutionary tax.
Speaker 3: Right, that's a very effective way to kill any sort
Speaker 3: of living animal. Yeah, definitely, or again make it never
Speaker 3: want to eat you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the fact that different organs can vary is pretty
Speaker 3: interesting because the localization of these secondary metabolite says a
Speaker 3: lot about from a survival standpoint, what these plants really
Speaker 3: are trying to protect. So most of what you most
Speaker 3: of the stuff you want to avoid with econodam, although
Speaker 3: I recommend avoiding the whole freaking plant in terms of digestion.
Speaker 3: Are the growth tips, so any part that's actively growing,
Speaker 3: so a leaf, bud, the flowers, right, Reproduction is the
Speaker 3: key to many sort of species.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you want to protect the parts that.
Speaker 2: Do that, so they should be the most dangerous the.
Speaker 3: Roots because essentially a plant is nothing without its roots.
Speaker 3: And most of the deaths that I encountered in my
Speaker 3: trying to avoid encountering them were from people eating the tubers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's left over at that point? So if you
Speaker 1: are going to use aconite, use the stems, right, but
Speaker 1: also don't use any part of it.
Speaker 4: Just seem like if you're going to use it, think
Speaker 4: of twice and don't yourself, right, But that brings up
Speaker 4: a really interesting point because it's not just herbivores that
Speaker 4: are interacting with these plants.
Speaker 3: They're flowering plants. They're an angiosperm, and what do we
Speaker 3: know about angiosperms?
Speaker 2: Lots of flying bees, and pollinator.
Speaker 1: Was like a wing thing to give us a cue,
Speaker 1: he was flapping his hands. We got there eventually.
Speaker 3: So when people started looking at the levels of these
Speaker 3: toxic alkaloids, which again a conatine is just one of them.
Speaker 3: There's at least ten different very toxic alkaloids to consider
Speaker 3: when considering this plant. I don't know why we just
Speaker 3: focus on one of them, regardless, when people looked at
Speaker 3: which parts of the plant were producing that it made
Speaker 3: a lot of sense because the highest levels you see
Speaker 3: are in the roots. I brought. I brought a graph.
Speaker 2: There's a graph.
Speaker 3: First with the highest concentration are the roots. The second
Speaker 3: is the pollen, third is the flower, so the flower
Speaker 3: being the sepals and the petals the pollen, which is
Speaker 3: really interesting because that's a floral reward, right, it's a gammy.
Speaker 3: You need it to get from one plant to another
Speaker 3: for sexual reproduction. But there's within reason. Yeah, but why
Speaker 3: would a plant want to protect its pollen where that's
Speaker 3: the key, you know, something needs to pick that up
Speaker 3: and take it, usually a bee in this case, because
Speaker 3: it's worth mentioning that most econodam are be pollinated to
Speaker 3: the point that in Europe at least and in Asia too,
Speaker 3: I think there are bees that pollinate nothing else, right,
Speaker 3: that their entire life history overlaps only with the blooming
Speaker 3: period of that specific monks of the species. So this
Speaker 3: question became, why the hell are these plants putting this
Speaker 3: in their pollen? And why is that second to you know,
Speaker 3: the root, but then beats out the flour and the leaf,
Speaker 3: which are parts you generally assume are pretty important for
Speaker 3: a plant. Well, that brings up a really weird idea
Speaker 3: of the fact that you know, certain insects start to
Speaker 3: benefit from these compounds. Oh what Yeah, and this is
Speaker 3: still largely hypothetical and remains to be tested, But think
Speaker 3: about it this way. Everyone's really familiar with the monarch butterfly.
Speaker 3: It eats milkweed, and part of what it does is
Speaker 3: that milkweed is full of other alkaloids, which we can
Speaker 3: talk about it in a later episode. But they sequester
Speaker 3: those poisons, and all that means is that their storm
Speaker 3: them in their tissues and that keeps birds from wanting
Speaker 3: to eat the caterpillars and the butterflies.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is so exciting.
Speaker 3: It's extremely exciting because someone Goslin and others in twenty
Speaker 3: thirteen put this idea to the test, and this was
Speaker 3: a really cool one of the cools papers I found
Speaker 3: in researching this, and it kind of comes down to
Speaker 3: this idea of attraction versus protection. You want to protect
Speaker 3: your parts that are really important to you, but you
Speaker 3: also need to attract insect pollinators in this case. So
Speaker 3: could it be that these bees are collecting the pollen,
Speaker 3: feeding it to their offspring and it's questering at least
Speaker 3: some of those alkaloids and their tissues. And what they
Speaker 3: found is that, yes, it's happening. Now they do not
Speaker 3: know if it's enough to deter potential predators on the
Speaker 3: bees bees. But this concept of potentially reinforcing the fact
Speaker 3: that you're bolstering and protecting your flowers but also kind
Speaker 3: of encouraging your pollinators to keep coming back, that is
Speaker 3: so cool. There's enough evidence to suggest that further work
Speaker 3: should investigate this to it. That's really cool.
Speaker 2: That is really cool.
Speaker 1: And so just to like recap. Yeah, Like, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about these bees being able to take these poisonous
Speaker 1: things which are poisonous to so many vertebrates, so many arthropods,
Speaker 1: so many animals, and use that to also be toxic
Speaker 1: or poisonous.
Speaker 2: So that if something eats them, then they're going to
Speaker 2: get poisoned by that same poison that the plant made.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: That's super cool.
Speaker 3: This is an evolution at its best and why I'm
Speaker 3: in the field that I'm in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really exciting.
Speaker 3: So you've got this dual benefit, right, You've got this
Speaker 3: poison in your very sensitive tissues that are protecting you
Speaker 3: from generalists. Not to say things don't feed on these plants,
Speaker 3: they do. There's I came across a list of plenty
Speaker 3: of butterfly and maflar but that will feed on these plants.
Speaker 3: Specialization goes both bays, right, Yeah. Yeah, but it reduces
Speaker 3: the amount of animals that could potentially feed on you.
Speaker 3: But then this also added benefit of reproducing or adding
Speaker 3: to reproductive fitness by kind of helping out your so
Speaker 3: called symbaiant in.
Speaker 2: This case, that is so awesome.
Speaker 3: These are really neat plants, and I'm so happy these
Speaker 3: are the ones that we're covering. And that's not to
Speaker 3: say that like the species we mentioned are the only
Speaker 3: ones here that we're considering. I mean, a contodom is
Speaker 3: a northern hemisphere species. We have them in North America.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately a lot of ours are endangered.
Speaker 1: Why are they endangered?
Speaker 3: The ones in North America are largely due to habitat loss.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the number one reduction of any species
Speaker 3: on this planet. It's the one thing we should be
Speaker 3: fighting is just gobbling up habitat to preserve it instead
Speaker 3: of to build malls on it. But so, the IUCN
Speaker 3: red List, which is the International Union for Conservation of Nature,
Speaker 3: lists at least a handful of Acnodum species as critically
Speaker 3: or at least endangered on one level or another. So
Speaker 3: a lot of them are the ones that are native
Speaker 3: to the Himalayan region of India, Pakistan, and Nepal. And
Speaker 3: what ends up happening there is this is where a
Speaker 3: lot of the contention with herbalism practices comes from, right,
Speaker 3: So I'm not trying to crap on anyone's culture That's
Speaker 3: not what I'm doing here. I'm simply stating the facts.
Speaker 3: Is that a lot of these species are important to
Speaker 3: cultural practices, but any plants that become very popular or
Speaker 3: very important than those cultures are obviously sought after. Right.
Speaker 3: So the ICN Red List all of the species of
Speaker 3: Econonym that they listed are endangered because of overharvesting for
Speaker 3: these medicinal practices.
Speaker 2: So it's not like they're growing their own to be harvested.
Speaker 2: They're going out in the wild and harvesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's a sad fact about at least western erbalism,
Speaker 3: is the fact that they value naturally sourced product over
Speaker 3: product that has been grown horticulture. There are, at least
Speaker 3: in an agricultural setting, which is very counterintuitive because one
Speaker 3: thing is that despite the fact that these plants are
Speaker 3: producing these compounds, fact that natural selection is what it is,
Speaker 3: and you're not going to have the same pressures everywhere.
Speaker 3: These compounds are not always in the same doses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So what ends up happening is, like we mentioned, not
Speaker 3: all parts of the plant are as equally toxic, and
Speaker 3: if you want to get the most potent, generally that
Speaker 3: means harvesting the roots. So all of these plants are
Speaker 3: taken roots and all. There's no regenitive capabilities once you've
Speaker 3: harvested the root of a plant. So that's why a
Speaker 3: lot of these are ended up being put on the
Speaker 3: endangered species list is because you've harvested every chance this
Speaker 3: plant has of coming back. And that's to me kind
Speaker 3: of tragic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like one of the things that
Speaker 1: we keep coming back to in this podcast is the
Speaker 1: impact of urbanization and so like that in a vacuum
Speaker 1: over harvesting cannot be possible without the habitat reduction at
Speaker 1: the same time, and so it's a one to two
Speaker 1: punch where we have these urban communities spreading into areas
Speaker 1: and we have a lack of which in so many
Speaker 1: cases it's it's not financially feasible. So like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like this is it's almost an inevitable fact of urbanization.
Speaker 3: The question then becomes this a is this is an
Speaker 3: effective way of treating and is there educational ways of
Speaker 3: getting past that? But then, as you mentioned, and I'm
Speaker 3: really happy you did, is this idea of diminishing returns
Speaker 3: And that is where my contention with a lot of
Speaker 3: the foraging community comes from. It would be awesome if
Speaker 3: everyone could adopt forging practices, if we had enough land
Speaker 3: to support that, But unfortunately, this largely becomes a practice
Speaker 3: of people that are comfortable in areas where there isn't
Speaker 3: a lot of natural areas left. So as our natural
Speaker 3: areas shrink and people take up this practice and go
Speaker 3: into the forest and treat it like the bulk been
Speaker 3: at your grocery store. This is something we're going to
Speaker 3: see time and time again, and it's really important to
Speaker 3: mention that you do not have to take every last
Speaker 3: individual of a species to doom it to extinction. You
Speaker 3: can reduce its genetic diversity or its population numbers to
Speaker 3: levels in which they're just going to stagnate and die anyway.
Speaker 3: And that's the fear with a lot of these medicinal plants.
Speaker 2: Oh that was fun. Yeah, that was I learned a
Speaker 2: crap ton, including what monks hood actually looks like.
Speaker 3: A Once next fall comes around, I will happily show
Speaker 3: you all of the monkshood in our neighborhood.
Speaker 2: That would be so fun.
Speaker 3: Time. Well, I learned a ton too. Thank you for
Speaker 3: letting me exercise a set of muscles that I don't
Speaker 3: generally get to exercises.
Speaker 1: This was really great, super fun.
Speaker 2: To all of the expectations, and we have multiple more episodes.
Speaker 1: We have more coming to you, so I guess is
Speaker 1: that all we have.
Speaker 2: I think so we don't really need to tell you
Speaker 2: to wash your hands this time.
Speaker 1: Wash your plants, no boil your plant.
Speaker 3: Don't eat everything you were growing, I think is probably
Speaker 3: the better figure.
Speaker 2: Don't eat that plant, you filthy animals.
Speaker 1: Filthy animals,