The erect and splendid aconite, with its hood-like, blue-purple flowers, can be as poisonous as it is medicinal. This beautiful plant is known by many names, for example monkshood, friar’s cap, wolfbane and mousebane, and is native to the Swiss Alps. There you will find it on the alpine meadows, where the ground is rich, in damp hollows between low shrubs and in thinning woods right up to the highest elevation where the conifers grow.
Every part of the plant is highly poisonous. The whole plant, including the subsidiary tuber, which is developed from the root for the following year’s growth, is used to make a tincture for homoeopathic purposes. If this tincture was to be taken pure, it would result in certain death caused by cardiac paralysis and damage to the spinal cord. But diluted a thousand or one hundred thousand times, aconite becomes one of the best and most reliable homoeopathic medicines.
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