The difference between a drug and a poison is the dose. Paracelsus (1493-1541)
In late October 2023, colchicine, a drug obtained from the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale) was headline news in major newspapers, not as a medicine but as a lethal poison. The plant, also known as the Naked lady because it flowers ‘naked’ in the autumn with leaves appearing only the following spring (see photos), has been used as medicine since ancient times. The Egyptians for sure used corms, bulbs, and roots for therapy but it is not clear if Colchicum autumnale is the plant mentioned as crocus-from-the-South, crocus-from-the-Hills, or crocus from-the-delta in the 3500-year-old Ebers papyrus.
Dr. Connor Bowman, a doctor working as a Poisons specialist in Minnesota was charged with murdering his wife Betty with colchicine, seemingly to benefit from $500,000 life insurance cover. This is the latest reported case of presumed deliberate poisoning with the alkaloid, first studied in 1820 by the French pharmacists Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, famous for their identification of the highly effective antimalarial drug quinine from the Peruvian Cinchona bark.
Following Pelletier and Caventou’s report, the German pharmacist Philipp Lorenz Geiger (1785 – 1836) isolated colchicine which he found to be highly toxic. After feeding an 8-week-old cat with 10 grains (~ 650 mg) of the drug, the poor animal ‘developed diarrhoea and spasmodic colicky convulsions, dying twelve hours later’. Court documents charging Dr Bowman report that his pharmacist wife had an illness profile concordant with colchicine poisoning, presenting with ‘severe gastrointestinal distress and dehydration’ which progressed to death four days later’.
Colchicine was once widely used for the treatment of gouty arthritis, but it is difficult to dose. As patients on the drug often present with unacceptable adverse gastro-intestinal symptoms, it has become less widely used for this indication, particularly given the availability of more effective and safer alternatives. There was wide outrage when the US Food and Drug Administration licensed and granted market exclusivity to a US manufacturer for a colchicine tablet (Colcrys) for the treatment of gout and familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), a genetic inflammatory disorder. This exclusivity encouraged the company to increase the price of the drug from $0.09 to $4.85 per tablet with significant curtailment of patient-access to the cheap natural product.
Notwithstanding such controversies, there is growing interest in the use of colchicine at low doses for the treatment of pericarditis (inflammation of the lining of the heart) and related conditions. Dermatologists are excited about the drug’s potential in several difficult to treat auto-immune inflammatory skin diseases (e.g., Behçet’s disease). The drug has also been under intense study over the COVID-19 years as a drug for the prevention of severe complications in infected patients. The resurgence of interest in colchicine as therapy for both old and new indications is attested by the publication of at least 200 scientific papers in 2023 alone.
It is an irony of history that in the late 18th century Nicolas Husson, a retired French army officer residing in Sedan, Ardennes, produced an extract of Colchicum officinale to be sold as a highly profitable secret remedy for gout. Sadly for him, his secret formula was cracked by John Want, surgeon to the Northern Dispensary in London, in 1812.
Please also see earlier post on quinine by Professor Burguillo –From the cinchona tree to COVID-19 #MedicineTrees #MedicinalHerbs #MedicinalPlants #PlantMedicine #HerbalTeas #FolkloreRemedies #HerbalMedicine #TakingLeadFromNature #ShiitakeMushroom #LentinulaEdodes #Lentin #Statin #MushroomDermatitis #CholesterolLoweringMushroom #Eritadenine #AgaricusBisporus #EdibleMushrooms #Behçet’sDiseaseTherapy #FamilialMediterraneanFever #FMF #EbersPapyrusTherapies #PericarditisTherapy #PlantPoisons #AlkaloidDiscoverers #DrugDosing #DrugProfiteering #ColchiqueD’automne #SecretRemedies #EauMédicinaleD’Husson #PharmacistsAsDrugDiscoverers #SafranDesPrès
PhotoCredits: ALWP CEBP Colchicum autumnale growing in my garden in the autumn and spring
Medicine Trees 
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