Birthwort

Aristolochia—birthwort—was praised by the ancients for its power of easing childbirth.  Its womb-shaped flowers seemed to promise great sympathetic magic.  For thousands of years, plants of its genus have been used in the healing traditions of cultures round the world, for all sorts of maladies:  for gout, for asthma, for snakebite, as a diuretic.   It would appear to be a gift of Nature, and its lore time-hallowed wisdom:  motherwit.

If so, it is one scary mother:  the Medea of herbal medicine.

Growing as a weed amid Balkan wheat, and ground with it to make bread, it has caused endemic kidney failure in whole villages.  Women at a spa in Belgium who took it as a weight-loss supplement have faced dialysis, transplant, and death.  Its use in traditional Chinese medicine is strongly linked to urinary tract cancer:  in Taiwan, the incidence is about four times higher than in the West.  And one poor woman from Chelmsford, who got it from a Chinese herbalist for her complexion, has both terminally ravaged kidneys and cancer.

The Poison Garden—excellent website—says "Quite possibly, in terms of accidental poisoning, the most harmful plant of all those featured on this website."

I wonder if it has ever featured in a murder mystery?  Cyanide is ghastly but swift:  "...but the 'orrors of slow poisoning, that's the work of a fiend."

Nine