Hospital's Garden of Poisons

Lake County Mail, Issue 11, 6 August 1947, Page 2

Hospital's Garden of Poisons

One of the finest herb gardens in the country is to be found in London’s Whitechapel Road. It is tended by Dr. William Smart, head of the Pharmacological Department of the London Hospital. Dr. Smart started his garden two years ago on waste land in the Hospital grounds, because the hospital was having difficulty in buying herbs from which drugs are obtained. Kevv Gardens supplied rare seeds and plants, and Dr. Smart and his helpers got to work. In their first year they grew valuable quantities of the herb Mentha Piperita from the leaves of which oil of peppermint is made. That was good business because pepermint oil costs 95s a pound when you can get it. Some of the special prizes of the herb gardeners are plants from which deadly poisons are made. Atropa Belladonna, most dangerous variety of deadly nightshade, is one of them. Another is Aconitum Netellus. Country folk know it as Monk’s Hood.

The garden will be enlarged this year. It will be used not only to teach London Hospital students about the properties of herbs, but also to produce drugs which may lead to new and better ways of treating and curing disease.