CASTOR-OIL
The oil expressed, with or without the aid of heat, from the seeds of Ricinus communis. A girl, eighteen years of age, died in Liverpool in 1837 from eating a few of the castor-oil seeds.
ARUM MACULATUM
Cuckoo-pint, Wake-robin, or Lords and Ladies, is one of the most acrid of indigenous vegetables. The active property of the plant appears to be lost by drying, and by distillation in water. Children have been poisoned by its leaves.
YEW
The twigs and fruit of Taxus baccata act as irritant poisons, producing also symptoms which point to cerebro-spinal mischief. A case is recorded of poisoning by yew leaves, in which only five grains of the leaves were found in the stomach; yet death took place within an hour from the time the symptoms commenced (British Medical Journal, 1876, vol. ii. p. 392). In the above-mentioned case, vomiting and other signs of gastric irritation were absent. The chief symptoms present were—pallor of the face, faintness, an almost imperceptible pulse, facial convulsions, foaming at the mouth, stertorous breathing, loss of consciousness, ending in death. The symptoms are due to an alkaloid toxin. Several children have died after eating the fruit. Post-mortem signs of irritation of the alimentary canal.
LABURNUM
Cytisus Laburnum, or common Laburnum, the seeds, bark, and wood of which are poisonous. They contain a narcotico-acrid, crystallisable alkaloid—Cytisine—producing vomiting, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, and insensibility. Recovery took place in two cases mentioned by Trail, from the use of emetics and ammonia.
FOOL‘S PARSLEY
Æthusa Cynapium has been mistaken for parsley. Nausea, vomiting, giddiness, and severe abdominal pains are among the most common symptoms of poisoning by this plant.