DÉjÀ Vu

Shroomed

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

2014

A good year for wild mushrooms has also meant a busy year for Italian poison control centers. More than 220 unlucky gatherers have been treated for symptoms of mushroom poisoning in just a few weeks, with at least four losing their lives to deadly fungus. Officials say that while gathering mushrooms in the woods can result in a delicious meal, extra care must be taken not to choose the wrong stems. The Telegraph reports:

The people most at risk of confusing mushrooms were often elderly, said Carla Alessi, from a regional health authority in Modena, where two of the recent deaths occurred.

“In our experience, they are often old people who go out to collect mushrooms and eat them without making the proper checks because they regard themselves as being experts.

“They've been gathering mushrooms since they were young but as they get older, their sight and their memory weaken, and with it their ability to recognise different varieties,” she told La Stampa newspaper.

c. 77

Pliny the Elder was Rome’s expert on the natural world, and mushrooms were no exception. After reminding his readers that the emperor Claudius was brought to an early grave by a poisonous fungi slipped into his dish by his young wife Agrippina, he offers tips for those who would go out and forage:

In general, these plants are of a pernicious nature, and the use of them should be altogether rejected; for if by chance they should happen to grow near a hob-nail, a piece of rusty iron, or a bit of rotten cloth, they will immediately imbibe all these foreign emanations and flavors, and transform them into poison. Who, in fact, is able to distinguish them, except those who dwell in the country, or the persons that are in the habit of gathering them? There are other circumstances, too, which render them noxious; if they grow near the hole of a serpent, for instance, or if they should happen to have been breathed upon by one when just beginning to open; being all the more disposed to imbibe the venom from their natural affinity to poisonous substances. 

It will therefore be as well to be on our guard.