This article contains the destroyers of the Season 3 finale of “White Lotus”.
After the season finale of “White Lotus”, audiences may never look at Piña Colada the same way again.
Timothy Ratliff (played by Jason Isaacs) long-standing murder suicide fantasy caught the spotlight in this episode as his family faced an uncertain future. He decided to poison the fruit of the ping-pong tree instead of facing the disappointment of losing his wealth.
A hotel worker at a luxury Thai resort has warned about the toxicity of the Ratliff tree. By the season finale, the same worker inadvertently gave him instructions on how to extract poison from seeds called “suicide trees.”
But what is the real story behind table tennis?
What is table tennis?
According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden of Hawaii, the ping-pong tree or Cerbera Odollam is native to South and Southeast Asia, tropical Pacific islands and parts of Australia.
The fruit is two to four inches long and ripens from green to red. Ty Matejowsky, president of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, specializing in cultural anthropology and food research, said the heart toxins of fruits are concentrated in the kernels of seeds, “almost like peach pits.”
Dr. Matejowsky said the tree resembles a clamped bone plant in the United States. Like clips, ping-pong trees have “a very pleasant aesthetic quality, but very dangerous in terms of consumption”. The same toxins can be found in lilies in the lilies of the valley and Fox Valley plants.
How toxic?
Ping-pong fruit contains the toxin cerberin, a heart glycoside that attacks the pump in the heart that controls sodium and potassium levels in the body. Dr. Mary Wermuth, a medical toxicologist at Indiana University, said low doses of cardiac glycosides can help increase heart contraction, but too much can be fatal.
Dr. Wermuth said what is equivalent to a fatal ping pong core depends on one's potential conditions, but some research shows that its seeds can be almost spent. With the heart rate dropping, vomiting and nausea may be the first symptoms.
What is its use history?
Due to its toxic quality, table tennis has been used in suicide attempts in the areas where it grows. Dr. Matejowsky said it has also been used in “trials of torture.” For example, until the early 20th century in Madagascar, ping pong fruit was used as a way to determine the innocence or innocence of a person accused of witchcraft. If they are guilty, they will die from ingestion of ping pong fruit, and if innocent, they will be saved by supernatural intervention.
“It is a way to make these supernatural responsibility for life and death judgements, and also make those who are punished for crimes feel intimate.”
Can Lochlan Ratliff really survive?
Dr. Wermuth and her colleagues found in a study co-authored with other toxicologists across the country that the earliest symptoms of ping-pong poisoning may be three hours after intake. In Sunday's finale, Lochlan Ratliff (played by Sam Nivola) gets sick within minutes of accidentally ingesting shattered pink fruit seeds.
Dr. Wermuth said it was also hard to say whether other members of the Ratliff family might cause any problems, whether the Punguna coladas of a small ping-pong ball would cause any problems. But, in the case of Lochlan, his survival could be a case of TV series and aborting medical problems.
“Can he survive? Sure,” she said. “But it depends on how much he has. It could be that he was just nauseating and vomiting, and his heart didn't stop beating.”
If he hadn't had a miraculous recovery, the youngest Ratliff would have received an antidote called Digoxin Immune Fab, which is stored in most hospital emergency rooms.
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