The First Scientist
Flash Fiction
Were she alive today she’d be a Science Nobelista, but Hrrui lived in prehistoric times, when the tyrannosaurus and the sabre tooth tiger roamed the earth. She lived in a grotto deep in the forest, and it was not an easy life. Her husband was good at hunting and they were sometimes able to feed on wild boar, wood pigeons, or rabbits_ zalambdalestids actually, before they evolved into rabbits. Hrui, for her part had a knack for picking plants, roots or fungi. Although the knowledge existed about plant toxicity, no one knew for sure which plants or fungus were safe to eat.
Hrrui was about to change that. In those days beset with so many dangers, humans had to be ruthless. The safety of their family came first, even at the expense of the lives of other humans.
So, do not be harsh on Hrrui.
She was determined to discover everything she could about potential sources of nourishment, because her family had to come first. She fed her family exclusively on stuff that had been proven to be non-toxic.
Wayfarers crossing her neck of the woods were always welcome, and she was happy to feed them. She would usually offer them a meal and a bed, and see them off in the morning, but she had an agenda.
She would serve them some untested fungus or plant. If they survived the night, she made a mental note that that particular picking was safe to consume.
Methodical as she was, she experimented with raw fungi and plants, boiled ones, dried ones, so she ended up with a comprehensive list of what was safe to eat.
It was thus that she had discovered that the destroying angel, the death cap, the fool’s cone cap etc were lethal, that some mushrooms, whilst not deadly could cause vomiting or milder symptoms. She was the first to discover that the false morel (gyromitra), though deadly, would lose its toxicity if it was dried.
Now, she had always been fascinated by the webcap, later to be known as the deadly webcap, which will be given the scientific name cortinarius rubellus, and had decided to test it on her next guests.
One day two brothers from the West, hunting nearby, were invited in, and fed with a soup of webcap fungus. They thoroughly enjoyed supper, pronounced it delicious, showed no bad symptoms, and left cheerily next morning.
Hrrui was delighted. She had always thought that the webcap might be safe to eat.
She and her family did not survive much longer after that. The cortinarius rubellus is one of the most virulent fungus around, but we now know that its poison takes anything from 30 hours to 30 days before smiting whoever has ingested it.
