Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: laurin volgeban in here. In two thousand and eight, a
Speaker 1: middle aged couple decided to spice things up by eating
Speaker 1: raw honey gathered from near Turkey's Black Sea, and then
Speaker 1: ended up in the hospital with symptoms that mimiced heart attacks.
Speaker 1: The culprit mad honey poisoning a little known ailment that
Speaker 1: has brought down ancient armies and in modern times been
Speaker 1: rumored to have a hallucinogenic effect that increases sexual performance.
Speaker 1: So called mad honey is produced by bees that ingest
Speaker 1: the nectar of poisonous plants, specifically ones that contain gray anatoxins.
Speaker 1: These are neurotoxins that are found in various species in
Speaker 1: the heather family, like rhododendrons azalias and mountain laurels. The
Speaker 1: naturally toxic syrup reportedly tastes more bitter than normal honey,
Speaker 1: and the toxic city is stronger in fresh honey gathered
Speaker 1: in the springtime. Variants on mad honey have been found
Speaker 1: in parts of Japan, Nepal, Brazil, North America, Europe, and
Speaker 1: the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Mad honey is
Speaker 1: a razor's edge substance that can go from intoxicating to
Speaker 1: lethal in just a few tablespoons, and because potency varies
Speaker 1: from hive to hive, there's no sure way to tell
Speaker 1: when enough is enough. In the case of the couple
Speaker 1: who wound up in the emergency room, increasingly large doses
Speaker 1: of the toxically tinged honey caused acute inferior myocardial infarctions
Speaker 1: aka heart irregularities. While typically not fatal, mad honey poisoning
Speaker 1: doesn't sound fun with symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive sweating,
Speaker 1: and dizziness. In rare cases, you could be looking at convulsions,
Speaker 1: low blood pressure, shock, and yes, heart trouble. Documentation of
Speaker 1: this goes all the way back to four once, when
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek commander Xenophon, returning with an army from Persia,
Speaker 1: wrote of his men experiencing an accidental poisoning. Before the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on, has Stuffworks spoke with
Speaker 1: Adrian Mayer, a research scholar in classics and history of
Speaker 1: science at Stanford University with a specialization in ancient biological
Speaker 1: and chemical warfare. She said Xenophon prided himself on choosing
Speaker 1: healthy and safe campsites in hostile territory. He noted nothing
Speaker 1: unusual about the campsite in Pontus, on the Black Sea
Speaker 1: coast on northeast Turkey, but he did note quote an
Speaker 1: extraordinary number of swarming bees, and said that his men
Speaker 1: soon discovered the hives and gorged on the sweet treat
Speaker 1: of wild honey. He was appalled when a soldier suddenly
Speaker 1: behaved like crazed madmen and collapsed in mass. His entire
Speaker 1: army was paralyzed and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to
Speaker 1: possible enemy attack. Luckily for them and this was again
Speaker 1: accidental and Xenophon's army recovered before they could be discovered.
Speaker 1: But ancient armies did use mad honey as a weapon,
Speaker 1: and quite effectively at that. Around sixty five BCE, King Mithriddes,
Speaker 1: the sixth of Pontus set a trap for the invading
Speaker 1: Roman army led by Pompy the Great. The Romans were
Speaker 1: moving along the coast of the Black Sea in present
Speaker 1: day northeast Turkey, the same area that Xenophon had been
Speaker 1: traveling through a few hundred years before. Mithriddeses troops set
Speaker 1: out poisonous mad honeycombs along the route. The Romans fell
Speaker 1: for the tasty trap, and meth Briddes's army attacked and
Speaker 1: killed about a thousand of them once they had been
Speaker 1: rendered helpless by the honey. Eventually, Pompey defeated him and
Speaker 1: ended his expanse into Rome's territories. Supposedly, mith Briddes died
Speaker 1: after being overthrown by his son under guard. He tried
Speaker 1: to kill himself with poison, but was inured to it.
Speaker 1: After years of mild preventive doses, he finally had to
Speaker 1: ask a garb to run them through. There are also
Speaker 1: instances of mad honey being used to make mead as
Speaker 1: a way of stalling encroaching forces. A mead, also called
Speaker 1: honey wine, is made by fermenting honey with water and
Speaker 1: often flavoring the mixture with fruits or spices. A two
Speaker 1: notable occurrences of mad mead as a biological weapon took
Speaker 1: place in the same region we've been talking about. In
Speaker 1: nine forty six, ce Olga of Kiev had his allies
Speaker 1: sneakily offer mead to his Russian foes, then slaughtered all
Speaker 1: five thousand of them once they had collapsed, and in
Speaker 1: fourteen eighty nine a Russian army left behind casks of
Speaker 1: poisoned mead when they abandoned the camp in the face
Speaker 1: of an incoming Potter army then swept back through and
Speaker 1: killed some ten thousand of them. The armies of antiquity
Speaker 1: may have fallen for these literal honey traps because sugar
Speaker 1: wasn't widespread until the seventeen hundred see before the technology
Speaker 1: and enslaved labor that brought the price down for sugar.
Speaker 1: Around that time, the sweeteners were rare and expensive in
Speaker 1: most places, limited to things like maple syrup, dates, and honey.
Speaker 1: So mad honey was a delicious but deadly trojan horse
Speaker 1: or trojan hive. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History Ancient armies waged war with hallucinogenic honey on
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Laurel Dove. Brain Stuff is
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