OZMON Loc: WIGAN UK

why is this beautiful plant poisonous,they look so nice in our hedgerows.

(Download)

welshgypsy Loc: North Wales UK

I have only just found out they are poisonous, I have a wildflower banking full of them and they look beautiful

welshgypsy Loc: North Wales UK

I have only just found out they are poisonous, I have a wildflower banking full of them and they look beautiful

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Nice one. Lonely is right!

Irvingite Charles Loc: Irving, Tx

frjack Loc: Boston, MA

Foxglove's botanical name is digitalis. It has been a significant and important cardiac medication stretching back a few centuries. Indeed, it is an entirely "natural" or "organic" medication that, like many of the "natural" remedies touted today in soft dulcet tones as an alternative to "big pharma" is deadly when used by the uninformed. It improves the strength of contraction of a failing heart (positive inotrope) and sometimes converts the irregular heart rhythm of atrial fibrillation to a sinus rhythm (positive chronotrope) and maintains it. It isn't always effective but works well a significant amount of the time. The margin of safety of digitalis (digitoxin, digoxin, or, in physician-speak "didge") is very narrow with a large number of potential drug-drug interactions that can lead to serious toxicity and death.

Back when my dad began practicing medicine in the early '30s digitalis was made from dessicated foxglove that was ground and formed into pills. Potency varied considerably. Now it is synthesized and dosage is standard. Overdose results in abnormal cardiac rhythms with death oftentimes coming from heart attack. One of the challenges of digitalis is that a low blood potassium level enhances the toxic potential even at therapeutic levels. Since it is oftentimes used with diuretics that lower potassium, the scenario can be very complicated.

A number of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries (Miss Marple is one of the great characters to have emerged from a writer's imagination. Without her Jessica Fletcher never would have "existed.") turned on foxglove surreptitiously given to a victim. Very effective means of murder.

toxdoc42

Pretty well stated. When I was a senior medical student, 1966, we had several preparations of cardiac glycosides, derivatives of the foxglove, to use orally. One was called digital is leaf, dried plant part, digitizing, a semi-synthetic and digoxin which is now the only one available. It was dangerous to switch from one to the other and using them was a nightmare. The standard was to start the medication and push the dose until the patient's heart failure improved or until side effects made the physician stop the medication. One startling side effect was "scintillating scotomata," funny flashing lights. The most famous example is that seen in Van Gogh's starry night, the yellow halos around the stars.

There were a few other preparations that could be used by injection, all but digoxin have disappeared.

Very little dig is used these days. It has been mostly replaced.

There are other plants which also contain the substance, cardiac glycosides, and are frequent means of suicide in some undeveloped countries.

I have a chapter in my book, Medical toxicology, antidotes and anecdotes, published by Springer, which deals with the murderous nurse Charles Cullen who liked giving dig to patients to kill them.

frjack Loc: Boston, MA

You were eight years ahead of me. I graduated from Temple Med in '74, did internal medicine for 14 years, and then switched to geriatric psychiatry. The worst suicide attempt I ever encountered was when I was working in Guyana in '89. A woman came to ER after an overdose. I'd not heard of the drug but when I told the nurse she froze. She looked it up for me and I froze. Turned out she took paraquat. I have no idea why it was around the house. I was entering the disorganized stage of panic trying to figure out the treatment (we didn't have everything necessary including electricity on that particular day). However, it was all for nothing. Somewhere between the ER and admissions her husband abducted her from the hospital. Got no follow-up but death was inevitable.

I followed the Cullen case in the papers. A precursor of 'physician guided death' as it is now called in lieu of the original name of physician assisted suicide. Wonder what docs of death use in Oregon?

OZMON Loc: WIGAN UK

many thanks for the comprehensive replies.

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

Very nice capture!

vicksart Loc: Novato, CA -earthquake country

Compounds from this plant have been used medicinally for treating heart ailments like congestive heart failure and arrhythmias. It is poisonous if used improperly. In gardens, it's a showstopper for accent color as you've shown here.

Very fine photo.

vicksart Loc: Novato, CA -earthquake country

Never mind. I see frjack already gave an in depth reply.