seem to us to be best explained by the effects of alcohol, 
an alcoholic’s nightmare about toxic mushrooms. Mey- 
rink reveals no knowledge of fungal toxicology. The 
prolific American writer Percival Wilde in his T?nsley’s 
Bones, published in 1942, introduces as a witness a 
knowledgeable female mycologist who seems to be ad- 
dicted to mushrooms of the genus Panaeolus as a substi- 
tute for cocktails, the author and his character displaying 
thereby an astonishing command of mushroomic eso- 
terica; but mushrooms in this yarn were not the agent 
used for the murder. 
The facts about lethal mushrooms are to be found, not 
in standard medical reference works, but in mycological 
publications. They are well summarized in John Rams- 
bottom’s 4 Handbook of the Larger British Fungi, an 
indispensable reference book, which however still charac- 
terizes Amanita mappa as poisonous, ignoring the work 
done by the French with this species. Good instances 
of poisoning by the deadly amanitas appear in a Canadian 
Government publication, Mushrooms and Toadstools, by 
H. 'T’. Giissow and W. 8S. Odell. Certainly the best 
worked up case history in any language is the account 
of the tragic end of a Madame Boyer and her daughter 
Elodie, more than a century ago, retold with dramatic 
suspense and pathos by Camille Fauvel in his delightful 
little book, Le Champignon qui tue, published in Paris 
in 1926. The best single source of information about all 
the toxic mushrooms is, we believe, Les Champignons 
Toawiques et Hallucinogénes, by Roger Heim, published 
by Boubée in Paris. 
Mycologists are prone to exaggerate the importance 
of mushroom poisonings in history. In their writings we 
repeatedly find a list of eminent persons who have died 
allegedly from eating poisonous mushrooms, a list that 
they copy from each other without verification. Some- 
[ 109 ] 
