i.88 



The Museum Gazette 



not the slightest sign of disagreement, and the symptoms are 

 in connection with the nervous system rather than the stomach. 

 In these the connection between cause and effect is usually 

 overlooked. The attacks are mainly painful and are attended 

 by muscular spasms, and are attributed to anything rather 

 than their efficient antecedent, which has, perhaps, been quite 

 forgotten. This kind of illness from good mushrooms is prob- 

 ably very common and may occur to those who have often 

 eaten them without ill result. 



Even in cases of acute poisoning by dangerous fungi the 

 effects are not always immediate. They are never, however, 

 long delayed, and since it usually happens that more than one 

 person is involved, it is not often that their cause is over- 

 looked. It has been common for the advocates of fungus- 

 eating to discredit newspaper reports as to deaths from their 

 favourite esculent. The experience recently recorded, how- 

 ever, by one of the most distinguished of our British fungolo- 

 gists places this question in a light from the influence of which 

 it is impossible to escape. Dr. Plowright, of King's Lynn, has 

 published the details of three series of cases occurring in his 

 own practice, in which deaths occurred from eating the Amanita 

 phalloides gathered in mistake for mushrooms. There is no 

 obvious reason why his experience should have differed much 

 from that of other practitioners throughout the kingdom, and 

 after making liberal allowance for coincidence, his facts open 

 to our imagination a very grave prospect. It may be said 

 that such accidents are usually due to gross ignorance or 

 carelessness, and this is probably in most instances true. 

 Still, however, it remains the fact, that such ignorance cannot 

 be eliminated, and further, that it is almost always those 

 who think they are well informed who get into danger, just 

 as it is those who think that they can swim who supply the 

 largest contingent of the deaths from bathing. Nor must it 

 be assumed that those most skilled in the differentiation of 

 mushrooms always escape risk. 



Periera tells us that " so strongly was the late accomplished 



