Doctors in Chiayi County on Monday warned against using medicinal herbs without a prescription, after a woman who ingested wolfsbane ended up in Dalin Tzu Chi General Hospital’s intensive care unit.
The woman, surnamed Chang (張), 61, had told her children to buy herbs from an apothecary for her muscle aches without seeing a doctor or a licensed Chinese medicine practitioner, said Lee Yi-ta (李易達), a cardiologist who treated her.
Chang felt some pain relief after taking the medicine that afternoon, then took another dose in the evening, Lee said.
Photo courtesy of Dalin Tzu Chi General Hospital
About one hour later, she was taken to hospital by her family after she began vomiting and experiencing heart palpitations, he said.
Lee said an electrocardiography showed that Chang had frequent atrial arrhythmia induced by aconite poisoning and she was immediately admitted to intensive care, where her condition was stabilized with medication.
Wolfsbane contains toxic levels of aconite and the hospital had recently treated another person who ingested it after his friend told him it could help with diabetes, Lee said.
Wolfsbane — which contains several dangerous alkaloids — is deemed to have medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine, said Liang Yu-chang (梁育彰), head of the hospital’s Pharmacology Department.
However, the tubers must be boiled for at least one hour before the toxins are neutralized to a safe level for human consumption, he said.
People should not experiment with herbs without consulting a licensed Chinese medicine doctor, Lee said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching