Killing Your Darlings Off in a Nice or Not so Nice Way.

Let's start with the Autumn Crocus.

Photo by Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash

I thought I would start with a very toxic plant that could easily cause fatalities. It happens to be a beautiful plant that flowers in the autumn. Hence the name Autumn Crocus. Do not confuse it with the spring crocus, which doesn’t cause concerns.

This plant contains a plant alkaloid called Colchicine. One can find it in a lot of backyard gardens.

Nowadays, many people drink herbal teas. It would be easy enough to serve tea in this manner.

This fall crocus has a multi-system poison that initially causes Gastro-Intestinal toxicity and slight confusion due to dehydration. This progresses to drowsiness, heart and lung failure, liver and kidney failure, and the body’s inability to produce the right amount of red and white blood cells and platelets in the blood.

Eventually, this results in death. This is the aim of the writer of mysteries.

Therapeutically it’s effective for either gout or Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) in a tablet form. In the past, many Greeks or Italians from the Mediterranean area used it for FMF.

Toxic Dose

Colchicine has a very narrow therapeutic index. That means that toxicity can sometimes…