When Does Medicine Become Magic?

Humans were using plants as medicine—and poison—long before anyone knew what an alkaloid was or how the nervous system worked.So how did we know what plants could do before we understood why they worked?For this Halloween companion episode, I’m following that question through screaming mandrakes, poisonous nightshades, witches’ flying ointments and foxglove—a plant people were using medicinally long before science could explain what it was doing to the heart.Along the way, we’ll get into what atropine and scopolamine actually do to the nervous system, why plants make these chemicals in the first place, how people learned about medicinal plants before modern pharmacology, and why the popular story that accused witches were really persecuted herbalists is a whole lot messier than it sounds.Because sometimes humans know that something works long before we know why.And somewhere in that gap, we tend to tell stories.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.