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Stoke Newington has large amounts of green space. Some is
cultivated, like Clissold Park, some very wild, such as the railway embankments along East
and West Bank, and some partially cultivated, like Abney Park Cemetery.
These are the home of many wild plants which are known to have pharmacological effects.
Most were probably introduced accidentally, although the wild cannabis would appear to
come from local discards. The New River flows from Middleton House in Enfield to the
reservoirs and the Old Pumping Station. Middleton House was owned for many years by the
Parker Bowles family; originally of Bowles the Gardener fame but later the family of
Camilla's ex-husband.
Mr Bowles grew many plants, including the opium poppy. His property was eventually sold to
the Royal Free Hospital and the School of Pharmacy. During the 1960s the plants in the
gardens were left unattended, their security being that they were unlabelled.
 In its heyday the New River delivered 38 million gallons of water a day to
London. It has been surmised that this was the source of some of the rarer exotic plants
like Coca leaves that have turned up in Stoke Newington. However, the more mundane wild
plants found include the foxglove which produces a number of drugs like dioxin and
digitoxin which are very active and used in heart disease.
A Dr Witherington was said to be the richest doctor outside London. He found one of his
patients was suffering from heart problems. Despite treatment, the patient got worse.
Witherington went to a local gypsy who gave him a concoction that proved extremely
effective. The patient recovered very quickly. After much haggling with the gypsy the
doctor paid a high price and obtained the secret recipe.
Through careful experimentation and a few accidents he found that the active ingredient
was the foxglove. He became even richer. He also discovered that some batches were more
effective than others, depending on the soil, seed, weather and season. Other natural
drugs have the same problem. For instance, some connoisseurs will say that cannabis from
the Lebanon is better than Moroccan, even if the seeds are from the same plant.
Magic mushrooms, which seem suddenly to appear in huge quantities on waste ground, give
very graphic dreams. Deadly nightshade, sometimes called bella donna (beautiful lady),
pops up quite regularly. Atropine is its active ingredient and was used by ladies at court
to make eye drops which dilated their pupils thought to add to their attractions. In the
1960s psychological experiments were carried out on male students. They were shown
photographs of young women and were asked whom they would like to go out with but not
necessarily the prettiest. They all chose the same ones those with the largest pupils.
Wild hops, used in brewing, appear regularly and possess THCs, the active ingredient in
cannabis. This might be one reason for the popularity of beer, as it contains more than
just alcohol. Yew trees and their bark have been used in folk medicine for many years and
an extract is now being used for treating cancer of the ovaries. At the moment it is
probably too expensive to be used extensively in the NHS.
Dr Dalton is a general practitioner at the Abney House Medical Centre.
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