This is discussed by the article: > There are toxic plants that may kill you but will be nice about it. “Poison hemlock is much better,” says “Wildman” Steve B

This is discussed by the article: > There are toxic plants that may kill you but will be nice about it. “Poison hemlock is much better,” says “Wildman” Steve Brill, a New York based foraging expert and tour guide with an encyclopedic knowledge of the edible and not-so-edible plants of the Northeast. “You just stop breathing and your heart stops.” Socrates, when choosing death over a life in exile as an old man, chose poisoning by poison hemlock. It was a gentle death. > Poison hemlock is related to spotted water hemlock, but, um, only taxonomically, not in the way its poisons affect mammals. Here is Brill’s explanation of what happens when you eat spotted water hemlock: > Every single muscle starts firing and contracting, so you have convulsions, you chew your tongue into ribbons, you vomit but then you can’t open your mouth because the jaw muscles are contracting 10 or 20 times as hard as they normally do, and you die a horrible death