SC - Passage East III - Part 8

[Ann & Les Shelton]

At 1:37 PM -0800 11/26/00, Chris Stanifer wrote:
>--- VonGraph <vongraph at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>  I think some of it may also come from the fat that
>>  the leaves of the tomato
>>  plant are poisionous:) Very in fact.
>
>More likely, it's due to the fact that the tomato is
>closely related to BellaDonna, or Deadly Nightshade,
>which has been known to be a deadly poison since
>antiquity.  Just a wild guess, though...

A wild guess that seems to have become an established fact through repetition.

Eggplant, potato, and tobacco are all related to nightshade, and 
nobody seems to have thought they were poisonous. It looks, from what 
I have been able to track down, as though the Italian writer who 
originally linked tomato to nightshade (he actually said 
"mandrake"--I don't know if that term included nightshade at the 
time) also linked it to eggplant, knew people ate it, but thought it 
was unhealthy. More details are in another post I have already sent.

Also, as best I recall, tomato isn't "closely related" to belladonna, 
although it is related.
- -- 
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/