Deadly Nightshade

 

One Saturday morning, I was out photographing insects and landscapes on Juniper Hill, I saw a small girl of about 9 picking and eating the attractive red berries of the deadly nightshade shrub.

I stopped my photography and said to the girl "those berries are poisonous".  I did not know what to do but since we were some way from a telephone or hospital I took the girl with a few of the berries to the nearest hospital I knew at Epson and took her, now limp (the poison is atropine), to casualty.

I said that I found her and she had been eating deadly nightshade and that she needed her stomach pumped immediately.

Instead of treating her they examined me to see if I had done anything and asked what I had given her.  I said the poison was atropine, so they asked me where I got it, I said it was in the berries she had eaten and I showed them the few I had collected.  They said that the could not identify the berries and said that she was drugged and that she would sleep it off.  I protested that she would die as her muscles were being paralysed.

I was arrested and tranquillised and held unable to give any more assistance.

I understand the girl died in the night because the person had not believed what I said, nor had they been able to identify her condition.

This error is because of the incorrect science of psychiatry (I knew about atropine because I had been given the drug prior to receiving ECT treatment in a psychiatric unit).  The false-science of psychiatry is responsible for medical errors and misdiagnosis.

Sadly Chris.

24/12/2011

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