oil on panel, 5 x 7"
Donated to A Home for Dawn
Could a tincture of Firethorn ever have been contained in an
old medicine vial like this? Bitter Firethorn berries warn of toxicity but were,
and still are, used in jams and jellies.
I plucked this bunch from one of the many bushes prominent near The
Spring Gardens along 19th street in Philadelphia. The tincture bottle was dug up from our former back
yard in Washington Crossing. If only this
bottle could speak! It may date back to fevered
times of bloodletting and mercury purge. If mercury was thought to be curative, I suppose
a distillation of Firethorn – cyanide - may not have been out of the question.
No comments:
Post a Comment