Beloved,
I wish above all things that thou mayest ....be in health, ...
3 John 1:2
"Measure your nutmeg carefully.
Very carefully.
Of all the well-loved seasonal spices, nutmeg stands out for its long and slightly twisted history. In the Middle Ages, it was used to end
unwanted pregnancies. More recently, desperate prisoners embraced it as a rather miserable drug substitute. So, on occasion, have teenagers, some of whom wound up at poison control centers. A couple of years ago, a man in Sweden claimed that nutmeg had induced him to spit at strangers on the street.
“It’s not that nutmeg cases are that common,” said Leon Gussow,
an Illinois toxicologist who publishes a blog for professionals called The Poison Review. “But toxicologists do recognize it as one of the more interesting spices in the kitchen.”
Nutmeg is the seed of an evergreen tree, Myristica fragrans, native to Indonesia although now cultivated widely. The spice mace comes from a thin protective layer that encloses that seed.
The spice trade first brought nutmeg to Europe in the 12th century, where it rapidly gained a reputation as a seed of unusual potency, strong enough to fight infection (including the Black Plague), stimulating enough to bring on menstruation, poisonous enough to induce an abortion.
It also earned shady credentials for inducing a kind of hazy, druglike high that could include hallucinations.
Toxicologists say that description is somewhat misleading, an overly romantic account of nutmeg’s generally unpleasant effects. It takes a fair amount of nutmeg — two tablespoons or more — before people start exhibiting symptoms.
These can include
---an out-of-body sensation, but the most common are
---intense nausea,
---dizziness,
---extreme dry mouth, and
---a lingering slowdown of normal brain function.
Dr. Gussow said nutmeg experimenters have compared it to a two-
day hangover.
“People have told me that it feels like you are encased in mud,” said Dr. Edward Boyer, ... “You’re not exactly comatose, but you feel really sluggish. And your remembrance of events during this time period is incomplete at best."
The main chemical culprit in nutmeg is called myristicin which forms naturally in the seeds (and in other plants, occurring in trace amounts in carrots). Myristicin belongs to a
family of compounds with psychoactive potential that occasionally are used to make much stronger psychotropic drugs.
And it is chemically related to another compound, safrole, also found in nutmeg, which is sometimes used in the synthesis of the street drug Ecstasy.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the natural compound acts like these synthetic drugs.
Still, nutmeg incidents are rare — at least, those reported to the authorities. “We do see a few pediatric cases where parents left an open spice jar where a child could reach it,” said Dr. Patrick Lank.
Dr. Lank was a co-author of a recent paper tracking 10 years of nutmeg poisoning, as reported to Illinois poison control centers.
The authors discovered 32 cases in a 10-year period; 17 were accidental and 15 were deliberate. Of the deliberate cases, most involved young people between the ages of 15 and 20 who were mixing nutmeg with pharmaceuticals. Of that group, one had such a bad reaction that he ended up on a ventilator.
Dr. Boyer said he has seen just two cases of nutmeg poisoning that
required hospitalization in 15 years, and both of those were teenagers looking for a high. “They recovered more slowly than we expected, and then the nutmeg story crept out,” he said.
The usual holiday samplings of nutmeg — the dusting on eggnog or the quarter-teaspoon sprinkle that goes into a pie or cake — is not a risk to revelers. In those doses, the woodsy, sweet flavor should simply be enjoyed."
NYT
