Author: Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster

The healing power of poisonous plants

Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of WestminsterLeave a Comment on The healing power of poisonous plants

Triff/Shutterstock Some of the best-known medicines come from poisonous plants. The chemotherapy drug taxol comes from the yew tree, morphine from the opium poppy and digoxin from the foxglove. These plants can have lethal toxicity if taken in their raw form. Digoxin is prescribed to treat angina at doses a thousand times more dilute than […]

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Women folk healers were branded as witches, but their treatments may have been medically sound

Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of WestminsterLeave a Comment on Women folk healers were branded as witches, but their treatments may have been medically sound

AlexShevchenko78/Shutterstock “Hubble bubble toil and trouble” is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that conjures images of evil witches making potions in giant cauldrons. But the truth was that women persecuted as witches were probably legitimate healers of the time. Prior to the 14th century, women healers were generally tolerated throughout Europe, offering one of the […]

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