Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we
Speaker 2: are heading into the vault for an older episode of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is part one of
Speaker 2: our series on diamonds, originally published January sixteenth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Let's dive right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we are going to begin a multi episode
Speaker 1: dive into the world of diamonds. So diamonds, this is
Speaker 1: a topic that it's probably been in sort of the
Speaker 1: background for a while. We've considered, you know, we know
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of interesting things about diamonds,
Speaker 1: but I know, for my own part, there's like this
Speaker 1: surface level resistance to covering diamonds because the first thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is just sort of like the
Speaker 1: ubiquitous vision of diamonds that you encounter in diamond TV commercials,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of, you know, it certainly drives
Speaker 1: home this idea that diamonds are something everyone wants. Diamonds
Speaker 1: are something everyone needs. But also diamonds end up looking
Speaker 1: like this ridiculously mainstream, square thing, and I'm just resistant
Speaker 1: to the idea that there might be anything cool about them.
Speaker 2: The elegance, the grandeur, the luxury.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but when you dive deeper, both in terms
Speaker 1: of the subject matter and also the history of diamonds,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more there, and so we have a
Speaker 1: number of different angles to approach in this series, including
Speaker 1: some basic reminders about what diamonds are. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought it a nice way to sort of kick this
Speaker 1: off would just be to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: just like how we perceive diamonds, not even like, you know, overtly,
Speaker 1: like let's sit down and think about diamonds, but just
Speaker 1: sort of, like, you know, subconsciously, how we've grown up
Speaker 1: processing them, because yeah, they're they're highly referenced in our language.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're valuable. Obviously, why are they valuable
Speaker 1: the various answers to that, But for my own part,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it growing up. Diamonds were first
Speaker 1: of all, something that you know, my mother, various female
Speaker 1: members of the family had, but they were too precious
Speaker 1: for me to touch or you know, look at too much.
Speaker 1: And then if you did look at them, and I
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge this will vary depending on your family's
Speaker 1: particular jewels, but they never looked like much to me,
Speaker 1: especially as a kid. I'd look at one and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a little speck of nothing, but then the light
Speaker 1: catches it just right and it's brilliant. It's amazing. But
Speaker 1: then you look back at it, Okay, no, just a
Speaker 1: little rock or something. And then watching movies, I would
Speaker 1: I would know two things about diamonds. First of all,
Speaker 1: they're super valuable because people are always trying to steal them,
Speaker 1: and once you steal them, you can just like turn
Speaker 1: it in for money somewhere, I guess. And finally, and
Speaker 1: this often is seen in the same movies, you can
Speaker 1: take a diamond and cut through any pane of glass
Speaker 1: instantly by tracing a circle on that pane of glass,
Speaker 1: you know, and it just neatly falls out into your hand,
Speaker 1: or use a little suction cup to pull it out right.
Speaker 2: I assume that's not really true. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2: Is that? Have you ever looked into that?
Speaker 1: I believe this has been mythbusted. Okay, so do not attempt,
Speaker 1: but it looks super easy in various caper films and
Speaker 1: TV shows and cartoons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to think about the early significance of
Speaker 2: diamonds to me, apart from them just being like a
Speaker 2: cash equivalent mcguffin in you know, high stories and stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, the bad guy in the movie always wants
Speaker 2: the diamonds, Get me the diamonds in real life. I
Speaker 2: remember when I was young, I think I was a
Speaker 2: little confused about the difference between a diamond and a
Speaker 2: glass prism, because they looked the same to me, and
Speaker 2: the glass prism was bigger and could care asked, you know,
Speaker 2: the the rainbows all over the wall, and so it
Speaker 2: wasn't quite clear to me. I guess what was better
Speaker 2: about this really tiny diamond as opposed to the huge
Speaker 2: diamond hanging in the window.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the prism, like you said, is a lot bigger.
Speaker 1: It seems to work a lot better. Uh, caveat on
Speaker 1: that in a bit. But but then, more to the point,
Speaker 1: super cheap. You can buy prisms all day, you know,
Speaker 1: especially the plastic variety, and you're not going to break
Speaker 1: the bank.
Speaker 2: But then again, apart from just the knowledge that a
Speaker 2: lot of people had them, you know, on like their
Speaker 2: engagement ring, their or their wedding ring. I guess usually
Speaker 2: engagement ring. I didn't really have much real world consciousness
Speaker 2: of them. They were they were primarily something in fiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the TV ads too, though. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking as a kid, it's like you'd see these images
Speaker 1: of like, all right, you're in love, you're married, you
Speaker 1: need to give more diamonds, and part of you kind
Speaker 1: of like asked the question, Wow, if I'm ever a
Speaker 1: married person, well, I just be buying diamonds all the time,
Speaker 1: Like I've apparently got to buy the first diamond and
Speaker 1: then just diamonds every year thereafter. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's amusing that diamonds can be so all over the place.
Speaker 1: You know, they're valuable, but they can also seem kind
Speaker 1: of plain and lame. They're sparkling, they but also sometimes
Speaker 1: the way that we describe them and think of them
Speaker 1: that may be imbued with spiritual truth. They might be
Speaker 1: a physical manifestation of love, a symbol of human greed,
Speaker 1: of horror and inequality, a magical thief's tool, and also
Speaker 1: the ultimate and just gaudy excess, and I feel like
Speaker 1: even the geologic truth of the diamond, which we'll get
Speaker 1: into later, it feels so weird. Perhaps this weirdness, at
Speaker 1: least for me anyway, And I think maybe for a
Speaker 1: lot of like film viewers of the time, you might
Speaker 1: think back to a very memorable scene in Superman three
Speaker 1: in which Christopher Reeves Superman picks up a chunk of
Speaker 1: coal and crushes it in his fist and then open
Speaker 1: his fist to reveal not only a diamond, but a
Speaker 1: fully cut diamond.
Speaker 2: So it's got the what the facets on it that
Speaker 2: that's not how diamonds come straight out of the earth.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, of course they're usually not made
Speaker 1: by Superman, so I guess with Superman everything's fair game.
Speaker 1: He would do this in the comics too, Apparently I
Speaker 1: had to research this, but this is a Superman gag
Speaker 1: that goes way back. I don't know if he ever
Speaker 1: like makes any use of it, or it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like he's always just kind of showing off. Maybe
Speaker 1: the one up Jesus, I'm not sure, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: he'll just crush that coal, open his fist, Bam, diamond priceless,
Speaker 1: already cut, ready to go.
Speaker 2: It makes me wonder about a Superman plot line where
Speaker 2: the villains are like diamond cartels that are worried Superman
Speaker 2: is going to increase the supply too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like villains who are like, oh no, Superman's
Speaker 1: on his way to shut down an operation like quick
Speaker 1: spread tole everywhere, just in case he just haphazardly makes
Speaker 1: a few diamonds. We may come out ahead in the end.
Speaker 1: But yeah, to your point, could you get like goldfinger
Speaker 1: the diamond market couldn't.
Speaker 2: Hey yeah, oh no, wait, that would be a reverse Goldfinger.
Speaker 1: That's right, it would be a reverse Goldfinger. Yes, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I had this scene popping around my head. I had
Speaker 1: the diamond commercials, and those diamond commercials again, they try
Speaker 1: to convince you, even at a young age, that diamonds
Speaker 1: are life. Diamonds, diamonds are everything worth having in life,
Speaker 1: that they reflect life. And that's why I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be great that our first major avenue of
Speaker 1: investigation here concerns another idea that that diamonds just might
Speaker 1: be death.
Speaker 2: Right. So this is actually what first got me interested
Speaker 2: in the topic of diamonds for a series today, I
Speaker 2: wanted to begin by looking at a weird question, and
Speaker 2: the question is are diamonds poisonous?
Speaker 1: So to be clear, this is not getting into very
Speaker 1: valid discussions of things like blood, diamonds and all. This
Speaker 1: is the idea that there is something about the diamond
Speaker 1: that is in and of itself poisons to the human body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poisonous if ingested in one form or another. Now,
Speaker 2: before we get to the answer to this question, I
Speaker 2: need to back up and explain the origin of the question,
Speaker 2: which is that a few months ago you may remember
Speaker 2: we were doing a series on the shadow, the shadow
Speaker 2: in history, art, science, and so forth. I think this
Speaker 2: was during the last October, and one of the things
Speaker 2: we ended up talking about in that series on the
Speaker 2: shadow was an optical effect known as the Highligan shine.
Speaker 2: This is a real world phenomenon in which people sometimes
Speaker 2: see the shadow of their own head surrounded by a
Speaker 2: bright halo of light when they happen to be standing
Speaker 2: over a field of grass in the early morning. And
Speaker 2: there might be other conditions that create the same effect,
Speaker 2: but that's one of the most common ways people see it. Now,
Speaker 2: you can go back and listen to that episode if
Speaker 2: you want. The full explanation of how this halo arises
Speaker 2: from the interplay of sunlight, grass and do. The relevant
Speaker 2: fact about it for today is that the Hiligenshine is
Speaker 2: also sometimes called Cellini's halo, and it gets this name
Speaker 2: from one of the early figures to notice and mention
Speaker 2: it in writing, and that is a sixteenth century Italian
Speaker 2: goldsmith and sculptor named ben Venudo Cellini. One of the
Speaker 2: weirdest and most fascinating characters I have come across while
Speaker 2: researching for this show. I am a full steam ahead
Speaker 2: on the Benvenudo Cellini train. Now I kind of want
Speaker 2: to go back and read the entire memoirs. I might
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Benvenudo Cellini lived from fifteen hundred to fifteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: and though he is remembered for his artworks, which include
Speaker 2: an almost absurdly ornate golden salt cellar, we talked about
Speaker 2: this when he came up in that previous episode. He
Speaker 2: made that for Francis the First the king of France
Speaker 2: at the time, and also a large bronze sculpture of
Speaker 2: Perseus holding up the severed head of Medusa, which is
Speaker 2: one of the sculptures in the covered gallery that's at
Speaker 2: the edge of the Piazza della Signora, which is the
Speaker 2: big square in the center of Florence. Rob I've got
Speaker 2: a picture of both these artworks for you to look
Speaker 2: at here if you want. While he is known for
Speaker 2: these artworks, he is known today I think at least
Speaker 2: as much for his bizarre, fascinating, grandiose, and almost certainly
Speaker 2: heavily embellished auto biography, which is just packed full of
Speaker 2: these weird, passionate, rousing tales primarily about how awesome he is.
Speaker 2: We get stories of Cellini lauded by kings and queens
Speaker 2: for his unique genius, Cellini visited by angels who write
Speaker 2: secret heavenly words on his forehead, Cellini single handedly fighting
Speaker 2: off gangs of bandits, Chillini falsely imprisoned Celeni, hatching and
Speaker 2: executing a daring prison break from Castle San Angelo in Rome,
Speaker 2: and even in describing the Heiligensheine the glow around the
Speaker 2: shadow's head, Chillini seems to believe it to be a
Speaker 2: sign of God's special providence toward him, rather than like
Speaker 2: an optical effect that anyone would experience in the same circumstances.
Speaker 1: But as I recall from the previous episode, he was like,
Speaker 1: many people have observed this. When I asked them, they're like, yes,
Speaker 1: I see the halo above your head, around your head.
Speaker 1: You are chosen by God. Clearly we all agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I showed it to other people and they believe me.
Speaker 2: In fact, this is a theme I've noticed in the
Speaker 2: parts of his memoirs I've read. He often is like,
Speaker 2: somebody else saw the thing I did, and they agreed
Speaker 2: that it was magnificent, and they told me I was special.
Speaker 2: So Rob, I thought you would appreciate this too. We
Speaker 2: also get a story of Chillini meeting at least one
Speaker 2: mythical monster in the story, which is the salamander. So,
Speaker 2: when Cellini was a child of five years old, he
Speaker 2: tells that his father was playing the viola beside a
Speaker 2: fire of oak logs in the basement of their house
Speaker 2: when his father saw something in the fire and then
Speaker 2: made his children come and look, and little bin Venudo
Speaker 2: saw a lizard dancing in the heart of the flame,
Speaker 2: and his father told him that it was the mythical salamander,
Speaker 2: the elemental beast of fire, and he saw it.
Speaker 1: Oh, excellent. You know now that I've thought about it
Speaker 1: a little bit. I think tomorrow's monster fact may have
Speaker 1: to be the salamander. But real quick, I think that
Speaker 1: I have read before that some of these myths about
Speaker 1: the salamander. And again we have to point out like
Speaker 1: a duality here there's this idea of a mythical fire lizard,
Speaker 1: and then there's the actual salamander. And the connecting tissue
Speaker 1: seems to be that there were accounts of burning damp
Speaker 1: logs that and in reality either contained a salamander or
Speaker 1: you know, had a salamander clinging to the underside of it.
Speaker 1: You'll frequently find salamanders in you know, boggy or marshy
Speaker 1: environments underneath such a log. But if you were to
Speaker 1: take such a log through it on the fire, and
Speaker 1: you would see some sort of little cre you're squirming there. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's some sort of It's clearly it's made of fire.
Speaker 1: That's why it's in the fire. Now, it's just a
Speaker 1: salamander that was on the log you threw in. Now
Speaker 1: why you're throwing in super damp logs, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you just don't have a lot, and maybe the
Speaker 1: fire's fully raging at that point, and therefore you can
Speaker 1: throw something a little damp on there.
Speaker 2: That is an interesting possibility. I hadn't thought about it
Speaker 2: that way, but yeah, maybe somebody actually did accidentally get
Speaker 2: some salamanders in the fire.
Speaker 1: More on that tomorrow. More in that tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay. In the case of this story, having read
Speaker 2: it from the autobiography, I really can't tell if this
Speaker 2: is something that makes more sense as there actually was
Speaker 2: some sort of creature in there and they just misinterpreted
Speaker 2: what it was, or if I don't know, they were
Speaker 2: just looking into fire and seeing things in the shapes.
Speaker 1: That's one of the compounding factors here, right, is that
Speaker 1: humans logs staring into fires, and if you steer into
Speaker 1: fires long enough, your imagination can allow you to see things.
Speaker 1: And then if you have a pre existing cultural notion
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of magical fire lizard in there, oh,
Speaker 1: you might just see it anyway.
Speaker 2: All of that to say that while Benvenudo Cellini is
Speaker 2: a fascinating and in some ways important historical figure, we
Speaker 2: should not take anything in his autobiography at face value
Speaker 2: as history or science. You just read it and you
Speaker 2: get the feeling even without you know, comparing it to
Speaker 2: external evidence. Like, Okay, there's obviously some embellishment going on here.
Speaker 2: But to come back to the diamond question, one of
Speaker 2: the many, many weird stories Chillini tells about his time
Speaker 2: in prison is about a supposed attempt on his life
Speaker 2: via poison made out of shattered diamonds. So to set
Speaker 2: the stage in this passage, Chillini is hanging out in prison,
Speaker 2: one of the multiple times he's imprisoned in the story,
Speaker 2: he has just written a sonnet that will prove his innocence, Like,
Speaker 2: he's written a sonnet that is so virtue and indicative
Speaker 2: of his lack of criminality that he believes the constable
Speaker 2: had it sent to the Pope for review, with the
Speaker 2: implication that like, when the Pope sees this poem I wrote,
Speaker 2: then they'll have to release me because they'll know I
Speaker 2: couldn't have done it. But suddenly the friendly constable in
Speaker 2: the prison dies and he is replaced by the constable
Speaker 2: is replaced by his brother, And at this point Chillini
Speaker 2: believes that a group of his enemies sort of like
Speaker 2: seize the moment and conspire to kill him by poison.
Speaker 2: And another thing is that Jellini is frequently making references
Speaker 2: to conspiracies of enemies against him. He seems to constantly
Speaker 2: think that he's got a bunch of enemies who are
Speaker 2: out to get him. And it's not exactly clear to
Speaker 2: me how much truth there is to this. There might be,
Speaker 2: but it's hard to tell. So he describes their plot
Speaker 2: as follows, and the translation of Chileini's autobiography I'm going
Speaker 2: to read for here is by Hamus Roscoe. This was
Speaker 2: published back in the nineteenth century. So Chillini writes, they
Speaker 2: at first thought of mixing with my meat the powder
Speaker 2: of a pounded diamond. This is not a poison of itself,
Speaker 2: but is so excessively hard that it retains its acute angles,
Speaker 2: Differing from other stones, which, when they are pounded, entirely
Speaker 2: lose the sharpness of their particles and become round. The
Speaker 2: diamond alone preserves the acuteness of its angles. Hence it
Speaker 2: follows that when it enters the stomach with the meat,
Speaker 2: and the operation of digestion is to be performed, the
Speaker 2: particles of the diamond stick to the cartilages of the
Speaker 2: stomach and the bowels, And as the newly received food
Speaker 2: is impelled forward, the minute parts of the diamond which
Speaker 2: adhere to those cartilages in process of time perforate them,
Speaker 2: and this causes death, whereas every other sort of stone
Speaker 2: or glass, when mixed with meat, is incapable of sticking
Speaker 2: to the coat of the stomach, and of consequence is
Speaker 2: voided with the food.
Speaker 1: This doesn't sound like a pleasant poison.
Speaker 2: To No, this is horrible. No, he's saying that, I
Speaker 2: don't he's distinguishing it somehow from the concept of poison,
Speaker 2: which I don't know. I mean, either way, it's something
Speaker 2: that ingested harms you. But maybe the other idea is
Speaker 2: that a poison is something that though I don't even
Speaker 2: I don't think Chillini in his time would have had
Speaker 2: these concepts, but is killed by way of some like
Speaker 2: chemical metabolism, where this is killed because like literally, it's
Speaker 2: just like pieces stabbing you on the inside. It's like
Speaker 2: swallowing a bunch of needles or something, except on an
Speaker 2: incredibly tiny scale. So he's saying, you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: mechanically killing you from the inside rather than chemically killing
Speaker 2: you from the inside, And it truly does sound horrible. However,
Speaker 2: Chillini says that he escapes death from the intended plot
Speaker 2: as a result of his enemies bungling their plan. So
Speaker 2: he says that one of the conspirators is that it
Speaker 2: was the supplier of the diamond. So that conspirator gets
Speaker 2: the diamond and he gives it to another one of
Speaker 2: the conspirators who is supposed to pound it into a powder,
Speaker 2: and that powder is going to be used to poison him.
Speaker 2: But this second guy who was supposed to pound the diamond,
Speaker 2: being broke and greedy, kept the diamond and swapped it
Speaker 2: out for a different gem of lesser value, which he
Speaker 2: pounded and then handed over for the purpose of the murder.
Speaker 2: So here we pick up again with Chillini's narrative. He says,
Speaker 2: on the day that it was administered to me, being
Speaker 2: good Friday, they put it into all my victuals, into
Speaker 2: the salad, the sauce, and the soup. I ate very heartily,
Speaker 2: as I had had no supper the night before, and
Speaker 2: it happened to be a holiday. I indeed felt the
Speaker 2: meat crash under my teeth. Oh, but never once dreamt
Speaker 2: of the villainous designs of my enemies. When I had
Speaker 2: done dinner, as there remained a little of the salad
Speaker 2: on the dish, I happened to fix my eyes on
Speaker 2: some of the smallest particles remaining. I immediately took them, and,
Speaker 2: advancing to the window, upon examining them by the light,
Speaker 2: recollected the unusual crashing above mentioned. Then, viewing the particles
Speaker 2: with attention, I was inclined to think, as far as
Speaker 2: my eye could judge that a pounded diamond had been
Speaker 2: mixed with my victuals. So Jeleni knows he's going to die,
Speaker 2: and he prays to God. However, upon examining the grains further,
Speaker 2: he realizes that they're actually not quite indestructible to him.
Speaker 2: He can sort of crack and crunch them with a
Speaker 2: small knife, and that means they are not actually made
Speaker 2: of diamond. And because a diamond he thinks he would
Speaker 2: not be able to crush with this small knife, but
Speaker 2: this other gym he would. And then he says, ohka, okay,
Speaker 2: if there are another gem, they're not actually able to
Speaker 2: injure me. It would have to be diamond powder for
Speaker 2: it to work. So I think he sort of like
Speaker 2: deduces the whole plot and how it was bungled here.
Speaker 2: But oh, there's a good twist here. Though he at
Speaker 2: first shows evidence of the attempted poisoning to another prisoner,
Speaker 2: a bishop of Pavia, who is in prison on account
Speaker 2: of quote plots and intrigues, and he allows this bishop
Speaker 2: in the cellover to think that Chillini has been successfully
Speaker 2: poisoned with a real diamond and only has a few
Speaker 2: months to live, and uses this to get the bishop
Speaker 2: to share his presumably better quality bishop food with Chillini.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is by no means the
Speaker 2: only story that Chillini tells about plots against his life.
Speaker 2: It's not even the only attempted poisoning. There's another story
Speaker 2: where he claims that enemies tried to poison his food
Speaker 2: with mercuric chloride at the time known as corrosive sublimate,
Speaker 2: which definitely is poisonous in reality, but according to Chillini,
Speaker 2: they didn't give him a big enough dose, so they
Speaker 2: poisoned him with it. Instead of killing him, it only
Speaker 2: made him sick to his stomach and cured his syphilis.
Speaker 2: Oh man, So, anyway, to come back to the question
Speaker 2: at hand, I was really fascinated by this story, and
Speaker 2: I wondered if there was any truth to Chillini's ideas
Speaker 2: about the lethal effect of eating ground up diamonds. And
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get into some more details here, but as
Speaker 2: best I can tell, the answer is probably no. But
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna give a note with such confidence that
Speaker 2: you get the green light to go eat some diamond powder.
Speaker 2: I'd still be cautious about it. Yeah, do not do that,
Speaker 2: because one thing that is clear is Chillini is far
Speaker 2: from the only person in history to advance this notion.
Speaker 2: It has been held by many in many different cultures,
Speaker 2: times and places throughout world history that eating diamonds is poisonous,
Speaker 2: though interestingly it also in other contexts has been diamonds
Speaker 2: have been regarded as medicine. So to further explore this
Speaker 2: urban legend about diamond based poisons, the best source I
Speaker 2: found was a book called Diamonds, An Early History of
Speaker 2: the King of Gems from Yale University Press, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: written by a British historian named Jack Ogden, who seems
Speaker 2: to specialize in the history of jewelry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great book. I've been reading this
Speaker 1: as well, and we'll reference this in future topics we're
Speaker 1: discussing concerning diamonds. But yeah, Ogden is what a genologist
Speaker 1: in addition to an historian, so he knows his diamonds.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in the section on poisoning by diamond Ogden
Speaker 2: says that, as far as he can tell, there is
Speaker 2: no scientific support for the belief that diamonds are poisonous.
Speaker 2: As one of the early sources to write extensively on
Speaker 2: this subject, Ogden cites the famous eleventh century Persian scientist
Speaker 2: and scholar al Biruni, who was one of the great
Speaker 2: polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age. Famously a master of
Speaker 2: many many disciplines, so he wrote books on extremely varied subjects,
Speaker 2: everything from mathematics to astronomy, history, geography, and ethnography. He
Speaker 2: apparently produced a very important medieval book on the culture
Speaker 2: of India. In one section, Ogden talks about how al
Speaker 2: Biruni made a note of how appreciation for diamonds varied
Speaker 2: greatly by culture, and so while diamonds were, he says,
Speaker 2: widely venerated for their ornamental value in India, he claimed
Speaker 2: that they were not equally venerated in neighboring regions like
Speaker 2: Iraq and Korsan, which Korison at the time would have
Speaker 2: been a region corresponding to what today parts of Iran, Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: and Central Asia, and in these latter regions, Albi Runi
Speaker 2: said that diamonds were only used for drilling and for
Speaker 2: making poison. But did Albi Rouney think that they were
Speaker 2: actually effective as poison. No. He offered several lines of
Speaker 2: evidence against the idea that pieces of diamond could be
Speaker 2: used as poison the way that Chillini would later describe.
Speaker 2: First of all, he mentions a kind of logical problem
Speaker 2: with how these poisoning plots are supposed to work. He says,
Speaker 2: if people were fed pieces of diamond as a poison quote,
Speaker 2: if it has not been ground, well, it will be
Speaker 2: betrayed by the teeth of the eater.
Speaker 3: Ugh.
Speaker 2: Oh god. There's a lot of like cringe inducing ideas here,
Speaker 2: from from tooth trauma, from crunching on a diamond to
Speaker 2: swallowing sharp things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like even if it's gritty, you know, like that
Speaker 1: might be enough to make the target of your assassination
Speaker 1: either just send back the dish or it would raise
Speaker 1: their suspicion that someone was trying to poison them with diamonds.
Speaker 1: As we saw our previous example, and certainly if the
Speaker 1: individual had a food taster as well. That would also
Speaker 1: be some that would also be something that would tip
Speaker 1: your hand here and would alert your target that you
Speaker 1: were trying to do them in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and interestingly, most of the old stories about poisonings
Speaker 2: via diamond powder concern very rich people in history, you know,
Speaker 2: and for I think probably obvious reasons that you know,
Speaker 2: diamond powder is probably not cheap to come by. So
Speaker 2: the people who were allegedly being poisoned by diamond powder
Speaker 2: were you know, aristocrats, enemies of the Medici family maybe,
Speaker 2: or kings and queens or popes or sultan's things like that.
Speaker 2: But anyways, so albi Rouni is saying, presumably, if it
Speaker 2: were to be successfully snuck into someone's food, it would
Speaker 2: have to be pulverized into a very fine powder. But
Speaker 2: the second thing is albi Rouni cites experimental evidence. He
Speaker 2: says that he and maybe he or someone else tried
Speaker 2: feeding pieces of diamond to a dog, and says that
Speaker 2: the dog showed no signs whatsoever of harm, neither immediately
Speaker 2: after the experiment nor any time later. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: dog's fine.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, is this the titular diamond dog?
Speaker 2: Then that had not occurred to me, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Now that is some experimental evidence, though on the other hand,
Speaker 2: that clearly would not meet the standards of a modern
Speaker 2: toxicology experiment. But it's something something to look at, now,
Speaker 2: I'll be rooney. He puts all these considerations together, and
Speaker 2: he says, you know, in the end, there's no basis
Speaker 2: for thinking diamonds are poisonous. He says that it is
Speaker 2: all idle talk, it's tall tales, but that did not
Speaker 2: stop lots of other people from believing it. Ogden mentions
Speaker 2: an account written by the sixteenth century English politician Jerome Horsey,
Speaker 2: who recorded comments made by the Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible.
Speaker 2: I believe this was near the time of Ivan's death,
Speaker 2: in which Ivan was going on about the godlike potency
Speaker 2: of the diamond, and he said, among other things, that
Speaker 2: quote the least parcel of it in powder will poison
Speaker 2: a horse, with the implication you know, how much more
Speaker 2: will it do to a human if it'll poison a horse.
Speaker 2: And I just wanted to mention a footnote of Ogden's
Speaker 2: where he says, well, first of all, in this footnote
Speaker 2: he says, you know, if you go trying to look
Speaker 2: up that comment of Ivans. It is not in the
Speaker 2: edited published account of Jerome Horsey's travels in Russia, but
Speaker 2: it is in his manuscript from which the edited account
Speaker 2: was produced. But then finally he says quote whether Ivan's
Speaker 2: example of a horse was a deliberate pun on Horsey's
Speaker 2: name is unknown. Ha but Ogden also mentions several records
Speaker 2: of people who allegedly attempted to commit murders by slipping
Speaker 2: diamonds into people's food. So one was noted by a
Speaker 2: sixteenth century Portuguese doctor named Garcia del Orta or Garcia
Speaker 2: de Orta, who claims that a woman tried to kill
Speaker 2: her sick husband by feeding him ground up diamonds and
Speaker 2: that didn't work. Another account takes place in early seventeenth
Speaker 2: century England. It's some kind of very messy lover's dispute
Speaker 2: among aristocrats in which the wife of an earl wanted
Speaker 2: her marriage annulled so she could marry a different earl.
Speaker 2: But the guy who she wanted to get married to
Speaker 2: had an adviser who disapproved of her, so she wanted
Speaker 2: to kill the adviser so she could go ahead with
Speaker 2: the marriage to this other guy. But apparently at one
Speaker 2: point In this caper, she sent an associate to an
Speaker 2: apothecary to buy diamond powder. It was like, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got to have the diamond powder for poisoning. You know,
Speaker 2: whatever it costs, get it. And the apothecary was like,
Speaker 2: I have no idea what you're talking about, and she
Speaker 2: called him a fool. And she was eventually able to
Speaker 2: poison the adviser, but it seems like it was historians
Speaker 2: think it was probably with a different agent other than
Speaker 2: diamond now. Ogden mentions an another sixteenth century physician, an
Speaker 2: Italian named Girolamo Cardano, who also commented on the use
Speaker 2: of diamonds as a poison and, similar to alb Rooney,
Speaker 2: cast doubt on the idea because he was like, you know,
Speaker 2: like there are cases where people steal diamonds by swallowing
Speaker 2: them and then later retrieving them, and there is there's
Speaker 2: no evidence that they suffered any harm. Now you might think, well,
Speaker 2: but those are like whole intact diamonds. Maybe maybe swallowing
Speaker 2: a whole diamond is fine, but swallowing the ground up
Speaker 2: diamond powder is what's really dangerous. And Cardano also says
Speaker 2: he knows of at least one case where somebody had
Speaker 2: swallowed a big mass of diamond powder quote, without prejudicing
Speaker 2: the health of the taker anymore than if he had
Speaker 2: eaten so much bread. Though this does make me wonder, Okay,
Speaker 2: assuming diamonds, diamonds and diamond powder are not particularly poisonous,
Speaker 2: how do they generally affect digestion? Like I was thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, like or is a diamond upset stomach a
Speaker 2: thing or diamond farts a thing?
Speaker 1: Well, certainly that I can see where the concept would
Speaker 1: be alluring, because I mean, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: diamond dog thing. Like diamond has just such linguistic weight,
Speaker 1: you know, it brings with it all these connotations of
Speaker 1: obscene wealth and splendor, and we combine it with something
Speaker 1: that could be considered lowly like a dog, like the
Speaker 1: passing of gas. It instantly like zings in the brain.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, And that kind of points to another thing.
Speaker 2: So Cardano's comment about stealing or smuggling diamonds by swallowing them,
Speaker 2: it really kind of makes me wonder about this belief
Speaker 2: in the poisonous power of diamonds, Like if this belief
Speaker 2: about death by diamond ingestion could trace back to people
Speaker 2: trying to prevent diamond theft or diamond smuggling, you know,
Speaker 2: like better not try to swallow it or hide it
Speaker 2: in your mouth. If you swallow it, it'll rip your
Speaker 2: guts apart. Now, Ogden kind of comes up short looking
Speaker 2: for recent evidence of experiments on the toxicity of diamonds,
Speaker 2: and he ends up having to look back to a
Speaker 2: letter written to the journal Notes and Queries in eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy five which claimed thatte the only possible way in
Speaker 2: which it diamond powder could be injurious would be as
Speaker 2: a mechanical irritant to the mucous membrane of the stomach.
Speaker 2: So I was kind of wondering, are there any more
Speaker 2: recent studies on the toxicity of ground up of either
Speaker 2: diamonds in whole form or shattered diamonds or diamonds ground
Speaker 2: up into a powder. And I did not directly find
Speaker 2: any good toxicology research on this. I did come across
Speaker 2: another just sort of like compilation overview in a book
Speaker 2: on nanomedicine written by an author named Robert Fritis, who
Speaker 2: has written a lot of information that's freely available online.
Speaker 2: In his work, Fridas collects a bunch of other claims
Speaker 2: from the history of diamonds, but both claims of them
Speaker 2: working as poison but also as medicine, and this author writing,
Speaker 2: I think in the early to mid two thousands, like
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, two thousand and five, it looked
Speaker 2: like these sources were dated. This author basically says that
Speaker 2: the evidence from history is inconclusive, and that he's also
Speaker 2: not able to find any good recent toxicology studies on
Speaker 2: diamond powder ingestion. He does note that any abrasive, gritty
Speaker 2: powder ingested in sufficient quantities can cause problems. Like if
Speaker 2: you just eat a bunch of sand, you know, you
Speaker 2: can get intestinal blockage, obviously if you not to be
Speaker 2: super super grossier. But if you know, you eat like
Speaker 2: a needle or something that is long and sharp, you
Speaker 2: can get perforations somewhere in the digestive system. So a
Speaker 2: lot of things, a lot of you know, non food items,
Speaker 2: if eaten in sufficient quantities, can hurt you. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess even food items eaten in sufficient quantities can
Speaker 2: hurt you. But he says it looks like there's not
Speaker 2: strong modern evidence that diamond powder in particular is dangerous. However,
Speaker 2: I would say that does not mean, you've got the
Speaker 2: green light to go eat it. This guy's conclusion seems
Speaker 2: to be that there's not strong evidence that diamond powder
Speaker 2: is poisonous, but there's like enough concern that it would
Speaker 2: be worth studying to make sure, especially for people who
Speaker 2: are maybe exposed to it more often in their line
Speaker 2: of work. So, to summarize my thoughts here, most of
Speaker 2: the actual accounts of diamonds used as poison as opposed
Speaker 2: to you know accounts as opposed to just free floating
Speaker 2: factoids about how diamonds work and what they can do,
Speaker 2: the accounts seem to be either unsubstantiated rumors, or they
Speaker 2: conclude with the diamond poison not working, or the details
Speaker 2: seem slippery. However, the evidence on whether diamonds are poison
Speaker 2: it does still seem to be mixed. It seems like
Speaker 2: it's probably not any more poisonous than any other abrasive,
Speaker 2: gritty powder, but we're far from one hundred percent confidence
Speaker 2: on that. Plus any powder insufficient quantities could hurt you,
Speaker 2: so I would still say it is probably better not
Speaker 2: to eat it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just no reason to ingest diamond dust like
Speaker 1: it's On one hand, yes, it probably won't hurt you,
Speaker 1: but just to be safe, don't do it and don't
Speaker 1: poison people. Obviously, that's I think, that's that's that's something
Speaker 1: we stand by here on the show. But even if
Speaker 1: you were in the business of poisoning people, this would
Speaker 1: not be a good poison. This would be nothing you
Speaker 1: could rely on, So don't do it.
Speaker 2: Well, it makes me wonder about the sort of the
Speaker 2: literary appeal of the idea of diamonds as poison. You know,
Speaker 2: the same reason it struck us as interesting to talk
Speaker 2: about this on the show is that it seems unusual
Speaker 2: and like an extravagant type of poison. So I almost
Speaker 2: wonder if in some of the stories where it was
Speaker 2: allegedly used to poison people or to attempt to poison people,
Speaker 2: it should make us question the facts of the narrative,
Speaker 2: because this is like a potent image of somebody using
Speaker 2: an extravagant, expensive luxury item to harm someone, and it's
Speaker 2: like packed with meaning.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of irony to it.
Speaker 1: This is exactly the kind of thing and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's impossible that either of these characters utilize some sort
Speaker 1: of fictional diamond poison at some point or another. But
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing you could imagine Diabolic from
Speaker 1: Danger Diabolic, yes, using you know, against his rich enemies.
Speaker 1: And likewise, for like modern film franchises, you could imagine
Speaker 1: the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw movies using something like this.
Speaker 1: It's just it would be the perfect ironic death for
Speaker 1: some sort of like a uber rich villain, right.
Speaker 2: Right, or for somebody like like Benvenudo Cellini, who is
Speaker 2: a goldsmith and a jeweler and a sculptor, somebody who
Speaker 2: worked with jewels. I don't know if scholars of Chillini's
Speaker 2: life and memoirs would have more to say about that,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it seems like it seems fitting that his
Speaker 2: enemies would try to get him with a beautiful jewel
Speaker 2: that he might be, something that he might have used
Speaker 2: in one of his works.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 1: this first episode of our look at Diamonds, but we'll
Speaker 1: be back on Thursday with part two. We're gonna kick
Speaker 1: that off with some diamond basics. So if you're like,
Speaker 1: hold on, I still don't know what a diamond is,
Speaker 1: don't worry. We're gonna jump in with some of the
Speaker 1: basics at the beginning of the next episode, and then
Speaker 1: we'll get into more like weird and fascinating elements of
Speaker 1: the Diamond's role and culture and belief and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it should be a fun ride. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and
Speaker 1: Thursdays listener mail on Mondays. On Wednesday's we do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster fact episode. I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna put together one on the Salmon and for tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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