A Columbia University professor accidentally poisoned herself with an ancient homemade flu remedy — forcing her to cancel class.
“Believe it or not, I have poisoned myself,” Professor Carol Rovane emailed her contemporary civilization class at the Ivy League school. “I am a great believer in natural this and that, and take tincture of elderberry instead of a flu shot. … It turns out they have cyanide.”
Rovane, 64, told The Post Wednesday that things took a toxic turn last week when she began to feel ill — and traced the malady to the elderberries that she had grown herself and had been consuming.
“I gradually became more ill. I actually know that some fruit contains some type cyanide,” she said.
Elderberries have been used for health and medicinal purposes for centuries in both Europe and the Americas — with Hippocrates himself calling the Elderberry tree his “medicine chest.”
But raw or unripe elderberries can release harmful lectins, which can cause severe stomach ailments, and can also contain small amounts of cyanide.
“It turns out that they should be cooked,” Rovane said.
Rovane penned the email to her students just a few hours before she was scheduled to walk into class.
“I just can’t teach you today,” the email said. “I really wanted to. I’m still in my office in fact, and have been trying to gird myself to come in to class. But I have to go home.”
She said Wednesday that the students “were sympathetic and sweet” about the whole thing.
To combat the poisoning, Rovane turned to another homeopathic remedy — bentonite clay, a mineral-based concoction that has long been used as a laxative.
“It has these positive ions that somehow interact with whatever the cyanide has done,” she said. “It helps. It’s a detox kind of thing.”