Historic poisons
- Subject: Historic poisons
- From: A* L*
- Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 14:31:27 +0100
In his book on poisons written in about 1300, Pietro D'Abano has a
section on "Cornuis", mentioning (i) De Cornuis spicae (ii) De Cornuis
Oleander and (iii) De Cornuis Bedeguar. What a "Cornuis" is has been
distracting me for the last two years, it is not a word that appears in
either my Latin or Italian dictionaries. Assuming that Spicae refers to
Lavender, Oleander to Nerium and Bedeguar to some sort of thistle, it is
hard to think of any part, common to all three, that might be toxic.
Most people associate "Cornus or Cornu with horns, but none of these
plants has anything resembling horns, so is this a red herring? Bark
doesn't work because thistles don't have bark, sap doesn't because he
has a large section dealing with sap, including a chapter dealing
specifically with that of Oleander and it can't be seed because Pietro
has a seed section too
I am totally perplexed by this problem, please can someone from down by
the Mediterranean come up with an answer and put me out of my misery!
Many thanks
Anthony
