Polite Dissent

Volume Four of Apothecarius Argentum moves the action from Beazol to the neighboring kingdom of Navara, a poor and starving country with a widespread wasting disease brought on by overuse of a toxic pesticide. Princess Primula and her companions, including friend/love-interest/Royal apothecary Argent and his rival, Lorca, third Prince of Navara.

There’s probably a spoiler or two in the annotations, so consider yourself warned.

Belladonna
The young prince has been suffering from seizures and was given belladonna to treat them.

Belladonna is a plant that has a long history of use in traditional medicine and continues to be used, to some extent, in modern medicine as well. The plant is very potent and must be used sparingly because of the high potential of adverse events, especially death. This is especially true for children (especially sickly malnourished ones like the prince). Let me put it this way: the more common name for belladonna is Deadly Nightshade.

Historically, while belladonna has been used to treat a variety of different ailments, it has not been used to treat seizures. The only mention I’ve even seen of the use of belladonna for seizures comes from homeopathy, which is not traditional medicine — or really any sort of medicine at all (despite what its practitioners would like you to think); homeopathy can best be described as a delusion combining sympathetic magic, wishful thinking, and an early-19th century understanding of science.

Belladonna contains several potent chemicals, most notably atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine — all drugs that are used today. Belladonna extract itself is still used in a few modern medicines, Donnatal (a stomach medication) is probably the best known.

Dandelion
The prince has been given an overdose of belladonna, and Argent gives him dandelion extract to correct it.

Argent is correct that belladonna is excreted almost entirely through the kidney, so increasing kidney function should get rid of the medicine faster. Diuretics (drugs that increase urine output) are one way of doing this. Dandelion has long been used as a diuretic. While I have seen no recent studies or reports that confirm its benefits in this regard, I’m willing to give the plant the benefit of the doubt because the effects of a diuretic are hard to miss (if you pee a lot, it’s a diuretic).

Activated Charcoal
Activated charcoal is used again to treat the chronic wasting disease that is common in Navara. I covered this in depth in the Volume 3 annotations.

Cochineal
The cochineal is a tiny insect (Dactylopius coccus) that grows on cacti in Central and South America. When the females of the species are collected, dried, and crushed they produce the brilliant red dye carmine which is used for coloring fabrics, cosmetics, and food.

It takes 70,000 insects, all collected by hand, to make a pound of dye, which is worth about $36 in today’s market.

Prince Lorca mentions several times that the insects grow on citrus, but they don’t — they can only live on certain species of cactus. I wonder if this might be a translation error, either in the translation of the manga, or from the author’s original sources. (There is a similar insect known as “Polish Cochineal,” and while it doesn’t grow on cacti, it doesn’t grow on citrus either.)

Marijuana
The story mentions a link between marijuana use and psychiatric disease. There have been several studies that have looked at this very subject, but the results have been unclear. Can marijuana use lead to psychiatric illness, or do people with pre-existing psychiatric disease tend to use marijuana more? Studies have suggested both results, so just leave this one as “undecided.”

Is it possible to die from a marijuana overdose? Again, sources vary, but almost all seem to agree that it would take an incredibly high level of exposure to be fatal, and many experts suggest that it would be physically impossible to achieve this high a dose. (On the other hand, with incense burning in a sealed room with heavy curtains, I suspect the king suffocated to death when the incense used up all the oxygen).