DANGER TO CHILDREN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 43.

DANGER TO CHILDREN.

Deadly Flowers and Plants.

BUTTERCUPS and daisies are generally associated in one's mind with Wordsworth, children, and Arcadian simplicity. It is difficult to conceive of anything hurtful or dangerous in connection with the pretty little yellow flower, but unfortunately it is not always the most modest and retiring plants or flowers that are the least harmful, for example, the deadly nightshade (atropa belladonna). Not that the buttercup can vie with the deadly nightshade in poisonous qualities, and still when consumed in sufficient quantities it will cause death. A proof of this has lately been afforded in England in the case of a boy who, after eating some buttercups, died within a few hours with all the symptoms of irritant poisoning. The buttercup belongs to the ranunculaceae, and nearly all the members of this group possess poisonous qualities, chiefly of an irritant nature, tho in a few narcotic principles are to be found. Every year some children lose their lives by eating poisonous seeds or flowers, and care should be taken to exclude from gardens or parks where children play, plants or shrubs of a poisonous nature, as deadly nightshade, laburnum, and yew. Fortunately, buttercups, tho nice to look at, do not as a rule tempt children to eat them wholesale, otherwise the mortality from this cause would be much greater than it is at present.—Pediatrics.