Burning Yew

[Deadeye Doc]

Taxol (the trade name), as mentioned above, is the result of work in the 1960s and is still used as an anticancer drug. The problem with most plant extracts is that there is what is known as a "therapeutic window" for treatment. Too low a dose and the effect is negligible or absent. Too high a dose and the result is toxicity and maybe death. A classic examle of this is Digitalis. "Rx of "Dig folia", or yellow foxglove leaf infusion was employed by William Withering in Shropshire when he observed the effectiveness of folk remedies on what is now recognised to be "Heart Failure" or "Cardiac Dropsy" as it was called then.

Yew was mentioned by Julius Caesar in his "Gallic Wars" as a toxin used for suicide. It is principally, as I understand it, the bark from which the drug is extracted.

Woodworkers cancer was first described by a female ENT specialist (unusual in those days) who I knew in High Wycombe - Esme Hadfield. It is principally a long term side effect of dust inhalation, along the lines of mesothelioma (a tumour of the outer sac of the lung, the pleura, resulting from inhalation of asbestos particles). OK so health and safety rules apply if you're going to be creating loads of dust!

The Journal of Laryngology & Otology (1969), 83:417-422 Cambridge University Press
Copyright © JLO (1984) Limited 1969
doi:10.1017/S0022215100070523

Tumours of the nose and sinuses in relation to woodworkers1
Esme Hadfield
Linaver, Lane End, Bucks.
Paper read at the Section of Laryngology Meeting, Royal Society of Medicine, June 21st 1968

High Wycombe