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Shiva108 .'s List: Poison
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Horse Chestnut is a familiar hardwood tree, well-known for its large compound leaves and colourful fruit in their spiky cases. Though this fruit is similar to the edible, Sweet Chestnut, the two trees are unrelated. Horse Chestnut is toxic. Children are especially attracted by the luster of Horse Chestnuts, which are traditionally strung and struck against one another in the game of "conkers." All parts of Horse Chestnut contain toxins, especially the fruit. The toxin is Aesculin, a bitter, poisonous glycoside which breaks down blood proteins. This property has led to the development of the common rat poison, warfarin, extracted from clovers, which contain a similar toxin. Most poisonings occur from people roasting & eating the fruit in the mistaken belief that they are the same as Sweet Chesnuts; they aren't! Some people claim you can boil the toxins out of Horse Chestnuts then dry them & grind them into a coarse flour, but you'd have to be pretty desperate, and is not recommended. There is no risk in handling the tree or its fruit. Chesnut poisoning is rarely fatal, but typically causes vomiting, loss of coordination, stupor and occasionally paralysis.
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Medical uses
The cyanide compound sodium nitroprusside is occasionally used in emergency medical situations to produce a rapid decrease in blood pressure in humans; it is also used as a vasodilator in vascular research. The cobalt in artificial Vitamin B12 contains a cyanide ligand as an artifact of the purification process. During World War I, a copper cyanide compound was briefly used by Japanese physicians for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy.[12]
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Physicians have observed that the herpes simplex virus becomes inactive just ten minutes after the application of grapefruit seed extract.
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Apricot trees were very popular, and the fruit was eaten raw in season and sun dried for winter. The pits were cracked to obtain the kernel that was crushed to obtain the oil for cooking and lamps. The hard shell was kept for a fire fuel. The kernel and oil could be eaten from the variety of apricots with a sweet kernel, but the bitter kernel variety had an oil containing poisonous prussic acid.
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