emetics nor purgatives can help him now, for his system 
has absorbed the venom during the long period of silent 
invasion. I'he initial seizure is followed by utter prostra- 
tion, which in turn is succeeded by another paroxysm 
like the first, and this alternation continues, perhaps for 
many days, until the victim, his pulse fast and weak, 
succumbs, usually after a delirious phase. he appear- 
ance of the patient meanwhile is marked by what the 
physicians describe as the Hippocratic facies—eyes 
sunken and staring as though with anxiety or terror, 
skin over the cheekbones taut and parched, nose pinched, 
temples hollow, ears leaden and cold, their lobes turned 
out, lips relaxed, the whole face livid—an appearance 
that is clear harbinger of imminent dissolution. 
Our lugubrious, even sinister, approach to the toxic 
fungi presents the elementary facts that should be known 
to any detective story craftsman who resorts to mush- 
room poison as a device in the construction of a plot. 
The art of the detective story is a minor literary genre 
proliferated by the English-speaking peoples. Its leading 
exponents are often conscientious in their scientific re- 
search. But when they invoke mushroom poisoning, 
they seem incapable of artistic performance, as though 
the mycophobia peculiar to the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon 
races inhibited all inquiry into the dark recesses of the 
repellent subject. Mushrooms remain a mystery to 
mystery writers. 
Before examining the texts, we must mention two 
other kinds of toxic mushrooms. First and foremost 
there is Amanita muscaria, erroneously regarded by 
many laymen as preeminently the poisonous mushroom. 
Its evil reputation far outruns its deserts. It gives its 
name to ‘muscarine’, the agent that most physicians and 
many medical examiners in the English-speaking world 
regard as synonymous with mushroom poisoning. But 
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