Pretty Poison

This is the fruit of a plant called Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum), a/k/a Indian turnip, Indian paintbrush. Ceridwen and I came across it near Philadelphia's wonderful Wissahickon Creek. I took several very blippable pictures during the excursion but this one wound up being my big research project when we got home. The berries are very poisonoous, but were used by Native Americans as dye and as treatment for sore eyes. Other parts of the plant have been used for starching clothes.

The scandal arises when Homeopathic remedies are recommended. Some people spend energy promoting the corm (its root) as aremedy for congested sinuses and sore throat. Even that requires boiling the stuff for days.

The reading brought to mind various encounters I've had with obvious charlatans and misguided people, regarding homeopathy, herbal medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, and the like. All of the above traditions have threads of legitimate wisdom running through them, but I've met an Ayurvedic doctor who, for a fee, waved a fistfull of rice counter-clockwise over a sick friend, then walked to the street and threw the rice away. It may have banished the Evil Eye, as he claimed, but the sickness seemed to ask for anribiotics and liquids and bed rest (which worked).

I have a dear old friend who's a major believer in Homeopathy and such, and who once had me gargling with some mixture of vegetable oil and a few other benign ingredients, for dental hygiene's sake. I'd enjoy her letters back in the day, railing against "chem-trails." I'd picture that very petite lady shaking her angry fist at the sky.

I respect this sort of thing as long as it encourages people to grow or gather their own substances and to learn all about plants, when there is no risk of injury. But when some charlatan is making serious money on the despair of gullible people and playing with known poisons, they are our shit-souled enemies; their customers our swindled neighbors.

It's good to become informed on this native plant, even though I seldom see it (at leats not in bloom). They grow wild in the woods rather than in city neighborhoods, in spite of its aesthetic charm, no horticulturist or serious gardener would keep them where a passer-by could pick them.