We publish below a public health warning received from a Highlands and Islands scientist:
Toxicology Unil Strathclyde University.
Dear Sir,
A recent copy of your magazine was found in the house of a North Uist crofter who died last month in mysterious circumstances. So sudden was his death that he was found slumped over his unfinished meal. After his body had been removed, his sister threw the meal remains to their collie which died within minutes. Under the circumstances the coroner called for a detailed autopsy which revealed lethal levels of the unusual chemical
idiamine, one of the most toxic natural alkaloids known to science. What rendered the case most bizarre was that this alkaloid only occurs in the Matabele bug,
Dudumbaya rhodesia, a common insect of the grassland plains in Zimbabwe and such countries. The poor crofter had never travelled further than Lochboisdale in his life and previously enjoyed superb health. The case was brought to my attention as I have investigated 27 similar deaths over the last decade, all in the Western Isles, all involving crofting families, all of which had discernible traces of i
diamine in the liver.
In this case the presence of your magazine may have helped solve the riddle; it was open at p.44 - a recipe involving corncrakes. I understand from RSPB that this bird winters in the grasslands where this bug abounds, and must return in spring with accumulated quantities of the alkaloid in its tissues. An RSPB biologist pointed out that the chemical causes aberrant behaviour in the bird too, causing it to run into houses, baling machines, under cars and into the jaws of domestic animals - a condition they have dubbed Mad Crake Disease (MCD).
I feel I must warn your readers that this bird is clearly poisonous and should on no account be eaten. Is it just coincidence that where the natural range of the corncrake coincides with crofting, the population of the islands and glens of the west have been decimated over the last 150 years?
Yours sincerely,
Prof. Murdo MacSpredder.
