SECT. LIV.—ON MUSHROOMS.
Of mushrooms, some prove deleterious from their general nature, and some by the quantity taken. They all bring on suffocation resembling choking. The general remedy which is to be instantly applied is to compel the persons affected to vomit by means of oil. They are also wonderfully relieved by drinking of the lye from vine-shoots, or from the wood of the wild pear with oxycrate, salts, or natron. And wild pears or their leaves, if boiled with mushrooms, take away their suffocative quality, and if eaten they prove beneficial. Hen’s dung, drunk in oxycrate, proves beneficial to them; likewise a drachm of birthwort, or of wormwood with wine, and honey when licked or drunk with water; and baum with natron, or the root and fruit of all-heal with wine, the burnt lees of wine with water, and copperas with vinegar, radish, mustard, or cresses when eaten. And since certain mushrooms having been tasted of by venomous animals occasion not only suffocation but also ulceration of the intestines, we must give in such cases plenty of wormwood, and the decoction of figs, and of marjoram, and honied water. Emetics, the hot hip-bath, and raw barley-flour when applied to the hypochondria, will also be proper.
Commentary. Nicander mentions suffocation as the common effect of taking mushrooms. His remedies are radishes, rue, the flowers of copper, natron, mustard, lixivial ashes, &c. Our author copies from Aëtius. Simeon Seth recommends honey with tepid water, and a moderate quantity of natron. Ruffus (ap. Oribas. Med. Collect, viii, 24) recommends clysters of natron, wormwood, the juice of radish, and the decoction of rue. Dioscorides recommends emetics of oil, natron, &c., and afterwards vinegar and stimulant decoctions. Avicenna’s remedies are nearly the same as those of our author. Alsaharavius directs us to give at first emetics, and then calefacients, such as pepper, cumin, wine, and, if necessary, the theriac. Haly Abbas, in like manner, recommends emetics, and then wine with honey, the theriac, &c. The symptoms, he says, are cold sweats, faintings, and embarrassment of breathing. All the ancient authors affirm that mushrooms act upon the organs of respiration, and we remark that a sense of suffocation is generally mentioned in the cases reported by modern writers.
For a full report of fungi, or mushrooms, see Dioscor. (iv, 53); Pliny (H. N. xxii, 46); Schulze (Tox. Vet. 14); Sprengel (Comment. in Dioscor.); Schweighaeuser (in Athen. Deipnos. ii, 59); Schneider (ad Nicand. Alex. 521). Diphilus, as quoted by Athenæus, states that all mushrooms which are black, livid, and hard, or which grow hard after being boiled, are of a deleterious nature. He recommends us to give mulse, oxymel, natron, and vinegar, so as to produce vomiting.
Dioscorides gives the following characters of poisonous fungi: Such as grow near rusty nails, or putrid rags of cloth, or near the lodging-place of reptiles, or by trees which have bad fruits, are deleterious; such have a glutinous coagulum (membrane adhering to the cap?) and when gathered soon become putrid and melt away. (M. M. iv, 83). According to Sprengel, these characters are not universally applicable (l. c.); but considering the experience which the ancients had in the use of these articles, they are no doubt generally so. The amanita muscaria, the agaricus necator, and many other species, may be set down as belonging to the ancient list of poisonous mushrooms.—Schulze, who appears to have paid great attention to the subject, enumerates the poisonous mushrooms of the ancients as follows:—1, Agaricus muscarius; 2, Agaricus piperatus; 3, Agaricus emeticus; 4, Boletus versicolor; 5, Boletus laricis. (Toxic. Vet. xiii, 5.)