California Buckeye Cautions

Caution:

" This, like its other relatives, is a tough one for the medical profession to
    understand. Its drug effects are scary and would seem to point ot using it as a
    pharmaceutical, not an herb. Its strychnine-like stimulus of motor functions,
    with increased firing of both halves of the autonomics, makes it a typical
    weasel-drug perfect for pharmacologic and medical study. In fact, the whole
    genus has been studied extensively and relegated to the toxicologists.
    The drug effects are simply poisonous, and indeed it is consumed accidentally by
    enough kids and ignorant adults that poison control centers get calls every year
    from people who have ingested it and gotten sick. Our use is ten levels below the
    toxic effects, and has nothing to do with its drug properties. In the proper adult
    doses of 5 to 15 drops of the tincture, morning and evening, it acts to strengthen
    the capillaries, decreasing their permeability, and lessening edema. This is most
    noticeable in the intestinal tract (hemorrhoids) and the portal system that drains
    the intestinal blood into the liver (sub-clinical portal congestion)." Ref. B p.106