Poisons and Their Antidotes

If someone has swallowed a poison, you call emergency services. You do not open a witchcraft website and start mixing mustard and salt.

We are leaving the old household table at the end of this page because it is part of the site’s history, and because it shows how people once thought about venom and cure. 

Why witches have always talked about poison

A working house keeps two kinds of knowledge close together, and it always has. One kind is the knowledge of what can wreck a condition: a plant that will stop a body, a powder that will sour a house, a name spoken with enough heat that a life starts to thin.

The other kind is the knowledge of what can pull a person back: milk, egg, salt, oak, lemon, hyssop, a bath, a physician, a prayer, a white candle after a black one. People outside this work hear “poison” and think of crime.

Inside the work it has always meant a current that enters and does harm, whether that current arrived through a bottle, a bite, a rumor, a buried jar, or a mouth that would not stop.

That is why the old household books and the old witch books sound like relatives. Both were written by people who lived closer to accident than we like to admit. Arsenic was sold for rats. Lead sat in pipes. A badly kept oil could turn. A bite on a farm could finish a season. There was no poison control number on the refrigerator. There was the apothecary, the midwife, the priest, and a page of “if this, then that” copied into a family book. Those pages read like folk magic because they were folk knowledge. White of egg and sweet milk to bind what had gone in. Vinegar and oil to meet something caustic. Oak bark and strong green tea to tighten what was running too loose. Salt. Lemon. Chalk. Soap. When the cupboard failed, even those writers had the sense to say send for the doctor.

On the altar we kept the same grammar and gave it another job. If a plant could stop a body in the field, it could stop a situation in ritual. If egg and milk could bind a toxin in the stomach, they could bind a crossed condition in a bath. The mistake, and it was a large one, was publishing the kitchen chart as if that were the whole teaching.

What the eighteenth century thought it was doing

In the eighteenth century, and in the household manuals that grew out of that world well into the next, poison was a practical terror rather than a romantic path. A family wanted to know what to do in the hour before help arrived. The first move in those books was always the same. Get the stuff out. Mustard and salt on the tongue, lukewarm water, a feather at the throat, then the stronger emetics of the period, then more water until they believed the stomach was empty. If nothing moved, they wanted the doctor and the stomach pump, especially for arsenic and the narcotics.

Underneath the panic there is a theory of the body that occultists still recognize. A poison is something that does not belong. It has to be expelled, or it has to be bound so it cannot keep acting, or it has to be met by its opposite so the burn stops spreading. That is not modern emergency medicine. It is an old way of picturing invasion and answer. Once you see that, the chart stops being a random list of pantry items and starts looking like a map of forces.

Acids were treated with alkalies because one current was told to sit down in the presence of the other. Alkalies were treated with vinegar and oil for the same reason running the other direction. Metals such as lead, copper, zinc, and the arsenic family were met with milk, egg, lemon, tea, and salts because those foods were understood as binders and washers. Narcotics were treated as a sleep that had gone too far, so the books wanted the person emptied, cooled, and then brought back into warmth. A mad dog was rage that could jump. An insect was small venom, the petty sting.

None of this makes the chart safe to follow. It does make the chart legible as ancestor talk.

How we use that language now

When a client comes to us and says they have been poisoned, they almost never mean a cup. They mean a life that turned. Money will not stay. Sleep will not come, or sleep will not lift. A blessing lands and slides off. Love turns into argument for no clean reason. The house feels heavy. A name keeps showing up in the mouth of people who should not be talking. That can be illness, and illness still belongs to a doctor. It can also be a condition. Crossing work, a sour jar, an enemy at the gate, leftover ritual that was never taken off, grief that has sat long enough to sour the field. In our language that is poison. The answering work is antidote.

A poison working, when we do it on purpose, is heat applied with intent. It is the thing that makes a situation unlivable for what you want gone. A person who treats your threshold like furniture. A hex that keeps rebuilding itself. A rumor that will not die. A habit that puts itself back together every Monday. You do not need a graveyard flower in the bottle to do that job. Black pepper, vinegar, sulfur, cayenne, wormwood in careful measure, the name, the petition, and a flame will carry most of what comes through this door.

An antidote working is what you do when the toxin is already in the room. You uncross first. You wash the body and the floor. You protect the door. Only after that do you decide whether you want justice, reunion, money, or peace. Honey poured onto glass still cuts the mouth. People lose months of work because they try to sweeten a man while they are still pouring pepper on his name, or they try to curse an enemy while they are still sitting in someone else’s jar. The old chart, for all its faults, at least understood sequence. Identify what went in. Meet it with the right opposite. Then feed the life that remains.

Baneful plants, and why most of you should not romance them

The poison path as a literary idea is older than this website and much prettier than the actual cupboard.

Datura, belladonna, aconite, foxglove, oleander, poke, hellebore: those names appear in flying ointments, enemy bottles, and later in crossing formulas because they taught the operator what real heat feels like.

They also kill.

They belong in a history lesson, and for a trained hand they belong in a locked drawer with gloves, a knife that never goes near food, and a rule that nothing touches broken skin.

Most of the condition oils that leave this house are built from the stand-in rather than from the corpse flower.

MOST….. not all of them …. And so, if you need something that is on the “back of the shelf”, so to speak, and you have been a long-term client of ours, don’t be shy to ask. 

FYI, we have a full collection of all plants as listed above, distilled as a tincture or as an oil. Not available for sale.. But available for those we know and those who need it.

That is not because we are timid. It is because the current is what pays, and because a client who cannot identify a plant has no business bathing in it. If you cannot say why a thing is on the table, it should not be on the table. The adult version of this work is control. The romantic version is collecting names that make you feel dangerous.

How to read each old pair without becoming a chemist

You do not need to memorize the chemistry of baryta. You need a feel for the kind of harm in front of you.

When the old books put acids against alkalies, they were talking about opposite burns. One ate through. The other locked and blistered from the far side. In spirit work that is the difference between a life being dissolved and a life being sealed under something caustic. The answer is not more of the same fire. The answer is to name the burn, stop adding to it, and neutralize.

When they wrote arsenic, they already knew they were out of their depth. “Send for the doctor and his stomach pump” is the most honest line on the entire page. Magically, wasting conditions and long hexes are cousins to that fear. You cut. You uncross. You take the body to a physician. You do not invent a drink from an article.

When they wrote opium and the other narcotics, they meant a sleep that would not lift. Binding work can look like that. A will goes missing. A person becomes fog. The household answer was empty, cool, then warm the body back into the room. Our answer is waking the will: road opening after a freeze, a hand back on the steering wheel, a bath that says this fog does not belong to you.

When they wrote lead, they meant heaviness, the metal that sits and will not rise. Lemon and salt were their kitchen tools. Citrus, salt, a floor wash, and getting the weight off a name are still ours.

When they wrote of a mad dog, they meant rage that jumps from body to body. When they wrote of an insect, they meant small malice, gossip, the petty send that itches until you make it a wound. We are not going to tell you to put fire on flesh. We will tell you that rage needs a hard stop, and that petty venom needs a sharp wash and a refusal to keep scratching.

Once you can tell a burn from a binding, a wasting from a heaviness, and a small sting from a house that has been soured on purpose, you can choose work. Until then you are guessing with pretty language.

If you came here because something already got in

If the poison is in a body, you leave this page and you get medical help.

If the poison is in a house or a name, you begin with uncrossing and a real wash of the rooms that feel wrong. Then you protect the door so the next thing that arrives has to knock. Then you decide what you actually want. Justice is one job. Reunion is another. Money is another. Peace is another. They do not all live in the same bottle.

That is the teaching that was hiding under the dusty list. Something went in. Something has to come out or be bound. Then you feed what is left.

The old household table, kept as a period piece

In the eighteenth century, and in the emergency pages families kept copying after that, this is the sort of advice that would have been written down. We first printed it here in 2015. We are leaving that wording in place so you can see the ancestor of the page. We are not asking you to follow it.

The first thing those books said, in a case of poisoning, was to cause the ejection of the poison by vomiting. To do this, they told the reader to place mustard mixed with salt on the tongue and give large quantities of lukewarm water, or to tickle the throat with a feather. These failing, they said, instantly resort to active emetics, like tartar emetic, sulphate of copper or sulphate of zinc. After vomiting has taken place with these, aid it, if possible, by copious draughts of warm water until the poison is entirely removed. Of course, if vomiting cannot be induced the stomach pump must be employed, especially if arsenic or narcotics have been taken.

The following table, they wrote, may be useful for emergencies.

Poisons. Antidotes.

Acids. Alkalies: soap and milk, chalk or soda.

Alkalies. Vegetable acids, vinegar, oil in abundance.

Alcohol. Common salt, moderately.

Arsenic. Send for the doctor and his stomach pump.

Antimony. Oak bark, strong green tea.

Baryta or lime. Epsom salts, oils, magnesia.

Bismuth. White of eggs, sweet milk.

Copper. White of eggs, strong coffee.

Gases. Cold douche, followed by friction.

Iodine. Starch, wheat flour in water.

Creosote. White of eggs, sweet milk.

Lead. Strong lemonade, Epsom salts.

Opium and other narcotics. Emetics, cold douche, and heat.

Phosphorus. Magnesia in copious draughts.

Zinc. White of eggs, sweet milk.

Mad-dog bite. Apply fire in some form to the wound, thoroughly and immediately.

Bite of insect. Ammonia, applied freely.

Read it as a document from a world that had to invent answers in the kitchen because the hospital was far away. The milk and the egg and the oak and the lemon are why those things still live on a working table. The fire on the bite and the feather in the throat are why this chart should never travel without the warning at the top of the page.

Poison is a current. Antidote is a current. The work begins when you know which one you are holding.

Victorian and late American domestic medicine

“The first thing to do in a case of poisoning is to cause the ejection of the poison by vomiting.

To do this, place mustard mixed with salt on the tongue and give large quantities of lukewarm water; or, tickle the throat with a feather. These failing, instantly resort to active emetics, like tartar emetic, sulphate of copper or sulphate of zinc.

After vomiting has taken place with these, aid it, if possible, by copious draughts of warm water until the poison is entirely removed.

Of course, if vomiting cannot be induced the stomach pump must be employed, especially if arsenic or narcotics have been taken.”

The following table may be useful for emergencies:—

POISONS.	ANTIDOTES.
Acids,	Alkalies: Soap and milk, chalk or soda.
Alkalies,	Vegetable acids, vinegar, oil in abundance.
Alcohol,	Common salt, moderately.
Arsenic,	Send for the doctor and his stomach pump.
Antimony,	Oak bark, strong green tea.
Baryta or lime,	Epsom salts, oils, magnesia.
Bismuth,	White of eggs, sweet milk.
Copper,	White of eggs, strong coffee.
Gases,	Cold douche, followed by friction.
Iodine,	Starch, wheat flour in water.
Creosote,	White of eggs, sweet milk.
Lead,	Strong lemonade, Epsom salts.
Opium and other narcotics,	Emetics, cold douche, and heat.
Phosphorus,	Magnesia in copious draughts.
Zinc,	White of eggs, sweet milk.
Mad-dog bite,	Apply fire in some form to the wound, thoroughly and immediately.
Bite of insect,	Ammonia, applied freely.
Bite of serpent,	Same as for mad dog, followed by whisky to intoxication.

The foregoing are the more common and more important poisonsand their antidotes.—Buckeye.