Thee Six Nine
03-10-2019, 01:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-30-2019, 01:33 PM by Malleus.)
Spring had arrived in Boreas and naturally it brought with it an abundance of plant life. Malleus, for one, intended to capitalize on it. Auster, while rainy, was a bit too cold at the moment to foster good plant growth which meant that if Malleus was going to capitalize on anything he'd have to go north to the south of Boreas. Pascal had come along with him. Malleus appreciated the primate's dexterous hands and how much easier it made his healing duties. With Pascal's help he could mix concoctions easier, tie bandages and make pots and bags to store things in. Malleus spied a familiar pudgy plant. It sported thick, club-like leaves and many rubbery stems. The stems were a dull mix of orange and red and the leaves were a vivid and lively green. Malleus was pretty sure he'd never pointed it out to Pascal before so he nodded towards the plant but made no move to pick it and instead kept walking. "Do you know what that is?" The macaque said he didn't. "Some call it pigweed but I prefer the name purslane." Malleus was quiet for a beat as he considered what he knew about the plant. "It might do your kind more good than mine. It is rumored to be able to break a fever and cure dysentery among other things but I've never worked with it and those that have seemed a bit iffy on whether or not it was effective. It might be a species thing; I know it's been used with more success among primates." Pascal conveyed his interest and then asked why they weren't collecting any. "Because we have limited time and resources I would rather collect things that I know work." The pair continued to walk on for some time. The Gulley was stuffed to the gills with useful plants. Every which way Malleus looked he spied something useful. It was hard to resist the urge to pursue each one, but he knew there were better things out there. A bit of patience would be good for him. More than once he had to remind himself that it was better to be selective, that it was better to go home with one rare plant than ten commons ones. He just had to be patient. Malleus' eyes lit upon something else. The plant, with its long, thin stem and many faceted head of white flowers, was rather nondescript and easily skipped over when on the hunt for beautiful flowers. "Do you know what that is?" Pascal answered without hesitation: queen anne's lace. "Close, but mistaking this plant for queen anne's lace might be a deadly mistake, though. You know the other name for queen anne's lace, right?" Pascal nodded. It was also called wild carrot. Wild carrot, like its domesticated relatives, was a good source of vitamins A and K, and of fiber which had its place in medicine. "Poison Hemlock looks a great deal like Queen Anne's Lace. There are two ways I know of to tell the difference. The flower clusters of poison hemlock tend be much smaller and less dense, and that's the best 'at a glance' way to tell in my opinion. If you still are not sure and want to know without a shadow of a doubt, pull the plant up. The roots of Queen Anne's Lace look and smell like carrot, and the roots of Poison Hemlock just look and smell like roots." "Hemlock is a tricky one. I don't know of any real way to treat it except to intervene right after ingestion and force the patient to vomit. There's enough 'poison' in 6-7 leaves to bring down an adult and the effects are quite nasty. The toxins will slowly paralyze the patient. Dying by hemlock is a slow way to go," he said matter of factly. "And I have heard some seem to crave the leaves as it takes hold of them, so they eat more. I do not know if that is true; never seen it myself. What I do know is that eventually they suffocate. Their lungs seem to freeze up like the rest of them." Malleus lapsed into silence as he considered the deadly effects of poison hemlock. Give him a death in battle any day over a slow poisoning. While there were certainly more horrifying ways to go, death by hemlock struck him as particularly offensive. To slowly lose the ability to move; to lay there completely helpless as the toxins slowly worked their way up your body... it was a terrible way to go. Luckily, for any would-be healers, it was fairly easy to tell the difference between queen anne's lace and poison hemlock. They were only alike at a cursory glance and it would take even a novice only a moment to tell them apart. |