Gelsemium is an Asian and North American genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Gelsemiaceae. The genus contains three species of shrubs to straggling or twining climbers. Two species are native to North America, and one to China and Southeast Asia.
In his classic early 20th century work on psychotropic drugs Phantastica, German pharmacologist Louis Lewin recounts the curious and tragic case – seemingly unique in the literature – of an individual who became addicted (in a manner far more often associated with opiates) to a Gelsemium preparation:
during a severe attack of rheumatism a man took a large quantity of an alcoholic tincture of Gelsemium sempervirens a plant which is liable to act on the brain and the medulla oblongata. Noticing an appreciable result he continued to take it, and finally became a slave to the drug. He gradually augmented the quantity, and reached 30 gr. of the tincture in one dose. Slowly he became pale, agitated, and discontented. He wasted away. Hallucination set in, and his state grew worse until disorders of the intelligence appeared. As he continued to increase the doses he fell into idiocy and died in a state of mental confusion
Could this be the mixture behind the Dr. Jekyll Mr Hyde transformaion?
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