Plinian medicine, or Mushroom clouds

When Rich suggested this blog should be erudite I wondered if he might wish for us to produce works such as Pliny the Elder or maybe Pliny the Younger. After a long career in service of the Roman empire the elder was in charge of the largest port of the Roman navy when Vesuvius erupted. He launched rescue boats toward the other side of the gulf of Naples and died during the effort. His nephew's description of that event led to the moniker Plinian eruption to describe the mushroom cloud of ash.

Locally we have a doctor Todd Mitchell who is in the news again today because of mushrooms. Two years ago he cut through FDA red tape to get a drug that inhibits the liver damage caused by poisonous mushrooms. He saved a family then, and he has just repeated that with another family. In Europe they have been using milk thistle extract to treat poisonings, but the drug is not approved in the US.

How is this all connected? Pliny the elder wrote Naturalis Historia, one of the earliest surviving examples of encyclopedic knowledge. In it he described the use of milk thistle.

Can we all reach the levels of the Plinys? Perhaps not, but we can aspire. We must.