Death by mushrooms
QUESTION Have any famous people died from mushroom poisoning?
It was widely believed Claudius I, who overcame physical and speech impediments to secure and expand the Roman Empire, was poisoned by his young fourth wife, agrippina.
according to several chroniclers, including tacitus, suetonius, Dio Cassius and Juvenal, the emperor died from deadly mushrooms.
However, this is not universally agreed. seneca’s apocolocyntosis, a contemporary work of political satire, does not mention poison, merely that Claudius died suddenly while watching a play and that his last words were: ‘Oh dear! I think I have s**t myself.’
For many years it was suspected Clement II, Pope for only nine months before his death in October 1047, was murdered by his successor, Benedict IX. a common story was he was given poisonous mushrooms to eat.
But a mid-20th century toxicological analysis of his remains confirmed he’d been poisoned by lead sugar. this toxin was used to sweeten wine since the days of the Romans.
In his memoirs, Voltaire wrote that Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died after ‘eating mushrooms, which brought on an apoplexy, and this plate of mushrooms changed the destiny of Europe’.
It appears that his death in 1740 was caused by eating a dish of death caps, the most dangerous of all fungi, which superficially resemble field mushrooms. a single bite can be deadly.
Edward Smyth, York.
ONE tragic case is that of the composer Johann schobert. Born in silesia, Poland, he entered into the service of the Prince of Conti in Paris in the 1760s and met Mozart and his father in 1763. a renowned composer, he wrote sonatas, concertos, opera and symphonies.
On august 28, 1767, he went mushrom picking with his family. He failed to persuade two local chefs to cook the mushrooms for him who told him they were poisonous, but he insisted otherwise and took them home to make into soup. after consuming the mushrooms, schobert, his wife, one of his children, his maid and four of his friends died.
E. Felix Schoendorfer, Stoke Poges, Bucks.
QUESTION Are any children’s books based on an epidemic?
A PARCEL Of Patterns, by Jill Paton walsh, tells the true story of how, during the outbreak of bubonic plague in the 1660s, the people of Eyam in the Derbyshire Dales isolated themselves to prevent the spread of contagion.
the title refers to a pedlar’s parcel of cloth which, it was believed had brought the sickness to the village.
Rosemary S. Hall, Chesterfield, Derbys.
JOHN CHRISTOPHER’S Empty world tells the story of teenager neil Miller, who lives with his elderly grandparents in the sleepy East sussex town of winchelsea.
the boy’s emotions have been blunted by the car accident that killed his parents and siblings.
news reports tell of the emergence of a new virus in India, the Calcutta Plague, which spreads rapidly around the world despite desperate efforts to contain it.
the virus first attacks the elderly and middle-aged, killing by a rapid acceleration of the ageing process, which neil’s biology teacher likens to the rare genetic condition Progeria.
society begins to break down as the virus gathers strength and attacks ever younger age groups.
Jean Ure’s Plague 99 opens with Fran, a teenage girl, returning to london with a group of teenagers after a month-long wilderness camp in the Peak District. the group, who have been ‘off-grid’ — out of contact by phone and online — are spooked by the lack of traffic on the motorway, but decide it is just an unusually quiet sunday.
after Fran is dropped off, she walks home only to find the way blocked by a barbed wire barricade. she learns that the area is sealed off in an attempt to prevent a virus outbreak in london from spreading to the rest of the country.
O. T. nelson’s the Girl who Owned a City is for younger readers and deals with the aftermath of a global plague that has killed all human beings above the age of 12. the surviving children form themselves into gangs.
Kevin Lynch, Barnstaple, Devon.
THE first chapter of the secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett describes a cholera epidemic in India.
Mary lennox’s parents and nurse die from this disease and she is sent to England to live with her uncle.
Frances Mary-Pratt, Carterton, Oxon.
IN LAURA INGALLS WILDER’S little House On the Prairie, malaria sweeps through the family.
One chapter is entitled Fever ’n’ ague, and describes how mosquitoes ‘swarm and buzz in the briars, biting and speckling laura across her forehead’.
she goes on to describe the aches, chills, fevers and hallucinations the family suffer.
Elaine Wheeler, St Ives, Cornwall.
QUESTION My nickname for jam roly-poly is dead man’s leg! Are there other macabre names for various foods?
FURtHER to the recent answer about hilarious naval terms, when my wife was at boarding school, what was supposed to be shepherd’s pie — though the pupils were never convinced — was known universally as kitten mash.
During a holiday in scandinavia in the late Fifties, my parents saw a poster advertising foam rubber mattresses — in norwegian, this was called skumgummi.
From that day on, in our household mousse was called scum Gummy.
Simon Lane, Northwood, Middlesex.
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