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First, there were small amounts of the Calabar bean - sometimes known as the Doomsday or ordeal plant, traditionally used in witchcraft ceremonies in West Africa.

There was even such a thing as trial by bean: the accused ate the poisonous Calabar bean, and if he threw it up and thus survived, he was innocent.

The final version of today’s Google Doodle for the U.S. shows the chemical structure of cortisone coming from an intermediate in soybean together with physostigmine from the West African Calabar bean.

A mixture of one ounce of tincture of Calabar bean with one and a half ounces of fluid extract of ergot was administered in doses of half a teaspoonful every two hours, and with better results than had followed other remedies.

If, therefore, Calabar bean benefits that disease, it cannot do so in the manner suggested by the author.