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Horse Whisperer author poisoned by mushrooms
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by Dave Keating | September 2, 2008 at 03:52 am
442 views | 17 Recommendations | 6 comments
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The author of the best-selling book "The Horse Whisperer" is in the hospital in Scotland after eating some poisonous mushrooms. He had cooked the mushrooms himself after finding them in the woods.
Bestselling author Nicholas Evans is in hospital in Scotland after eating poisonous mushrooms.
Evans, who wrote The Horse Whisperer, and his wife Charlotte were staying with her brother Alastair Gordon-Cumming and his wife Louisa at their home in Scotland, where they cooked and ate mushrooms which they had found on a local woodland walk.
After falling ill and being admitted to hospital in Elgin, it was discovered that the mushrooms included the highly toxic Cortinarius Speciosissimus, or Fool's Webcap. Symptoms of poisoning from these mushrooms include intense thirst, a burning sensation on the tongue and liver and kidney disorders.
All four were subsequently transferred to the renal unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, where they have been given dialysis and other treatment to support their kidneys.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (6)
at 04:07 on September 2nd, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 07:36 on September 2nd, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff. After encouraging folks in an earlier story to go out and forage for wild food such as blackberries we now have this story of how 'The Horse Whisperer' author Nicholas Evans has been poisoned after eating toxic mushrooms. So a word to the wise - yes go out and pick and eat but make sure you know what you are picking!
at 07:47 on September 2nd, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 09:14 on September 2nd, 2008
Dave Keating, I like this story. It's good stuff. Mushrooms are weird. A fungus collected in one area may be edible, but collected in another, may poison you. Much depends on the substrate upon which it grows. I figure the ones sold in the supermarket are safe.
at 10:39 on September 2nd, 2008
people do the darndest things
at 06:51 on September 3rd, 2008
"fungus collected in one area may be edible, but collected in another, may poison you. Much depends on the substrate upon which it grows."
There are very few mushrooms that change in toxicity depending on what they grow on - one case that comes to mind is that Chicken of the Woods growing on Yew trees is said to be poisonous. But overwhelmingly, what poisons people is mistakenly identifying a poisonous species as something edible. Also, most fungi are very specific in their chosen habitat - what looks like an edible species, growing in a habitat it's not supposed to grow in, is 99% certain to not be what you thought it was.