BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CamsBripGe, MassacnuseTts, Apri 7, 1972 VoL. 23, No. 3 
THE DEATH OF CLAUDIUS 
OR 
MUSHROOMS FOR MURDERERS 
BY 
R. Gorpon Wasson 
Tu illos boletos, voluptarium venenum, nihil 
oculti operis iudicas facere, etiam si 
praesentanei non fuerunt. 
—Seneca the Elder, Epistle XCV 
to Lucilius. 
For murderers there is only one kind of mushroom 
worth considering: Amanita phalloides. Almost every- 
one who dies from mushrooms dies from it; and most 
of those who have eaten it have died from it. Even a 
small piece of the cap may killa grown man. Specimens 
are easy to identify and easy to find in season—in our 
latitude from August into October. Their poisonous 
virtue survives cooking, freezing, drying. To speak 
more accurately, the deadly species are three in number, 
for we must add Amanita verna and Amanita virosa, but 
all three resemble each other so closely both in appear- 
ance and toxic properties that the murderer, whose ends 
after all are empirical, will disregard the distinctions as 
academic. He looks for white gills, veil (or ring), and 
volva, taking care not to be misled by any of the inno- 
cent amanitas, such as the citrina. On the autopsy table 
the victim shows pathological lesions of the viscera, but 
unlike the case with arsenic, the pathologist cannot iso- 
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