Speaker 1: The earth pours forth a profusion of medicinal plants, and
Speaker 1: is always producing something for the use of man. We
Speaker 1: may even suppose that it is out of compassion to us,
Speaker 1: that she has ordained certain substances to be poisonous, in
Speaker 1: order that, when we are weary of life hunger, a
Speaker 1: mode of death that most foreign to the kind disposition
Speaker 1: of the earth, might not consume us by a slow decay.
Speaker 1: That precipices might not laceerate our mangled bodies, that the
Speaker 1: unseemly punishment of the halter may not torture us by
Speaker 1: stopping the breath of one who seeks his own destruction,
Speaker 1: or that we may not seek our death in the
Speaker 1: ocean and become food for our graves, or that our
Speaker 1: bodies may not be gashed by steel. On this account,
Speaker 1: it is that nature has produced a substance which is
Speaker 1: very easily taken, and by which life is extinguished, the
Speaker 1: body remaining undefied child and retaining all its blood, and
Speaker 1: only causing a degree of thirst. And when it is
Speaker 1: destroyed by this means, neither bird nor beast will touch
Speaker 1: the body. But he who has perished by his own hands,
Speaker 1: he is reserved for the earth Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Pliny the Elder. Actually I'm Christian Seger.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was brought to you by a quote by
Speaker 1: a good old Pliny. Oh yes, yes, that's from the
Speaker 1: Natural History, one of our favorite Roman historians. As always,
Speaker 1: you can't take everything that Pliny says um as the
Speaker 1: as the complete truth. I always take it with a
Speaker 1: certain grain of salt. But he's he he when we'll
Speaker 1: get back to the grain of salt thing at the end, uh,
Speaker 1: because that actually comes from the riding of Plenty. But
Speaker 1: he always has such interesting inside and commentary on the
Speaker 1: natural world, and in this case he's talking about the
Speaker 1: wonders of poison. Yeah, it's a nice little poetic riff
Speaker 1: on basically the idea that our bodies are essentially like
Speaker 1: chemical machines, right, and that like think of it like
Speaker 1: as in comparison to a car, Like instead of putting
Speaker 1: gasoline in a car, if you filled it up with milk,
Speaker 1: that's gonna really mess with the system, right, and the
Speaker 1: exactly uh, And so basically we're focusing on how there
Speaker 1: are these things in the natural world that if you
Speaker 1: just put them into our system, boy does it really
Speaker 1: mess things up. And for the longest time we didn't
Speaker 1: really understand why. Right, there was all this mythology around
Speaker 1: the reasons why we have a whole episode that's on
Speaker 1: wolf Spain or actually aconite, uh, and the surrounding myths
Speaker 1: around that and the science of how that poisons the
Speaker 1: human body. But we thought, you know what, it's let's
Speaker 1: pull out the handbook. Let's look at some of the
Speaker 1: otter poisons that are out there. Uh, specifically natural ones
Speaker 1: were not. I don't think we have any synthetic ones
Speaker 1: in here. No, I think all of these tie into
Speaker 1: a natural source. And and that's really that's really the
Speaker 1: fascinating thing, right, is that these are all generally cases.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, these are cases where the natural world, specifically
Speaker 1: that the world of of plants has produced various chemical
Speaker 1: weapons for their defense, and humans are able to manipulate
Speaker 1: those chemical weapons to our advantage. And I mean we
Speaker 1: do that with things that aren't even poisons. We do
Speaker 1: that with spices. But in this case, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: looking at at at particular substances that that have been
Speaker 1: used and are used as deadly poisons, yet not all
Speaker 1: of these would necessarily be enough to fill up a
Speaker 1: whole episode. And also if we were just going to
Speaker 1: do an episode on poisons in general, that would fill
Speaker 1: up probably the whole podcast. So we decided, let's boil
Speaker 1: it down each of us take three that we're really
Speaker 1: interested in talking about, do the research, and then bring
Speaker 1: it to you all. Uh. And I had to be honest.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been talking about doing something like this
Speaker 1: for a while, but good Old Game of Thrones has
Speaker 1: definitely brought this to the forefront of my mind because
Speaker 1: poisons are so common on that show. Uh, if you're
Speaker 1: a fan, I'm going to refrain from or if you're
Speaker 1: not a fan, rather, I'm gonna refrain from mentioning any specifics.
Speaker 1: But George R. Martin has just created this entire world
Speaker 1: of fictional poisons. He's got the Tears of is It Lists,
Speaker 1: Tears of Lists, then there's the Strangler and the Long Farewell.
Speaker 1: But then he actually uses some real ones as well.
Speaker 1: In fact, Wolf Spaane isn't in the show has mentioned before. Uh,
Speaker 1: he he distorts what their actual effects are. But we
Speaker 1: any of the milk of a poppy as well, which
Speaker 1: is a medicinal substance but can be overdosed on with
Speaker 1: fairly easily. Yeah, exactly, And so it's like this thing
Speaker 1: that I don't know. In present day, we don't usually
Speaker 1: think about poison all that much because it's not common,
Speaker 1: even though it could be right, especially like when we
Speaker 1: go through these examples today, you realize like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: it's actually not that hard to get ahold of something
Speaker 1: that could absolutely kill my neighbor drop dead if I
Speaker 1: put it in their Pooh. Yeah, I mean, and if
Speaker 1: you have if you have a child, or even have
Speaker 1: have pets though, you mean you're aware that there are
Speaker 1: certain certain substances you do not want them to get
Speaker 1: their their hands or their paws upon. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So we decided to hit our favorites. Uh, and Robert,
Speaker 1: you're going to start us off today. This one sounds interesting,
Speaker 1: the Devil's Foot. Yes, so we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: where do we see our poisons use fictionally? Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones to be sure, but so many different murder mysteries
Speaker 1: in fiction revolve around a poison because it's always a
Speaker 1: mysterious death has occurred, and we have to connect the dots.
Speaker 1: It's like the classic answer to a locked room mystery
Speaker 1: is poison. Yeah, so uh, indeed, uh, I'm gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about a fictional poison from the Tales
Speaker 1: of Sherlock Holmes. Uh, Sir Rotha Conan Doyle's tales that
Speaker 1: actually has a real world counterpart. Uh, it was actually
Speaker 1: inspired by a particular poison. So some of my favorite
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes tales are the ones that did buck the
Speaker 1: more famous cliches. They're the ones where say Holmes lets
Speaker 1: the killer go free, or the ones where the narrative
Speaker 1: seems to tread dangerously close to supernatural waters. And so
Speaker 1: the perfect fit for both of these categories is nineteen
Speaker 1: tens The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, And it's pretty
Speaker 1: much my go to tail. And I'm particularly fond of
Speaker 1: the nineteen eight Granada adaptation that started to uh, the
Speaker 1: wonderful Jeremy Brett as homes. Are these the ones that
Speaker 1: they used to play on PBS. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: this is a wonderful episode because it really gets into
Speaker 1: that kind of supernatural possibly supernatural territory and and even
Speaker 1: some kind of psychedelic scenes. H I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think like some of the best home stuff is
Speaker 1: where you're treading so close to something that's like a
Speaker 1: paranormal phenomenon, but then there's like an actual explanation for it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I know a lot of people don't love
Speaker 1: this movie, but young Sherlock Holmes, that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that always attracted me to it as a
Speaker 1: kid was that it was like teetering on the brink
Speaker 1: of being supernatural. Oh yeah, that that's one that I
Speaker 1: only have a vague memory of from when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. But I actually thought it was full on
Speaker 1: supernatural woul until later that I realized that they were.
Speaker 1: They had an hallucination plot. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I am going to spoil the Adventure of the
Speaker 1: Devil's Foot for you. Spoilers for a one seven year
Speaker 1: old story. Yeah. And and if you are trying to
Speaker 1: remain spoiler free on this, if you're like making your
Speaker 1: way through the Granada television series or you're reading the books,
Speaker 1: then I don't know. I guess skip forward like fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: ten fifteen minutes and you can move on to the
Speaker 1: next one. Uh. But here's here's how it goes down.
Speaker 1: The case concerns a famed explorer named Dr Leon Sterndale
Speaker 1: and the feuding Trey Ginnis family. So Holmes and Watson
Speaker 1: there on a seaside holiday for health reasons. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: as you do, because Holmes has been taking too many
Speaker 1: drugs again. He needs to clean him out. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: well in the TV series it is, so it's I
Speaker 1: don't think this is president in the in the actual
Speaker 1: written tale, but Jeremy Brad especially wanted Holmes to kick
Speaker 1: his m his addiction, so he consisted that this would
Speaker 1: be a good episode for him to kick his cocaine
Speaker 1: and morphine. Okay, Okay, I was just joking. I had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's where I go to seaside towns for so.
Speaker 1: So they're in the midst of this and Holmes is like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's taken his syringe and buried it in
Speaker 1: the sand. Uh. And then suddenly a local man, Mr.
Speaker 1: Mortimer True Guinness, arrives with a vicar to report a
Speaker 1: sudden case of insanity. So Trey Guinness's two brothers have
Speaker 1: suddenly gone mad and that the sister is dead. They
Speaker 1: find they find the two brothers disturbingly just stark raving
Speaker 1: mad in their kitchen and the sister Brenda, sets opposite
Speaker 1: the window and she's just completely dead. So Sherlock investigates,
Speaker 1: and the early suspicion is that something terrifying appeared at
Speaker 1: the window and he killed her with frightened just drove
Speaker 1: them mad. So this, you know, just kind of potentially
Speaker 1: supernatural encounter, like what was this being that appeared at
Speaker 1: the window. But he starts looking at the evidence, and
Speaker 1: the ground outside the window is not disturbed. The mystery remains,
Speaker 1: but Holmes is is various. You know, he's gonna side
Speaker 1: on the non supernatural explanation. But then Mortemurtregennis winds up
Speaker 1: dead as well, and there's this lamp burning beside him
Speaker 1: on the table. Now Here in the lamp home, Holmes
Speaker 1: finds some unburnt powder, so he test this out on himself.
Speaker 1: He burns it inhales the smoke and he nearly succumbs
Speaker 1: to madness and death as well. And there's just fab
Speaker 1: the sequence in the TV show where he has these
Speaker 1: psychedelic visions of death. And then we we finally learn
Speaker 1: through his investigation that what happened is that Mortimer stole
Speaker 1: a sample of a deadly African poison from the local
Speaker 1: home of the explorer Dr Leon Sterndale. Now Sterndale had
Speaker 1: just left for a lengthy journey overseas. So more Mortimer
Speaker 1: thought that he was going to be out of the picture,
Speaker 1: you know, for virtually forever, because it was this is
Speaker 1: going to consume the rest of his life. But he
Speaker 1: had He ended up receiving word of the sisters death,
Speaker 1: of Brenda's death, and Brenda he had loved her for years,
Speaker 1: but he was unable to marry her, so he had
Speaker 1: a deep connection to her. So he returns and he
Speaker 1: kills mortimurtre Guinnis with the same deadly poison that was
Speaker 1: used on his beloved. And the poison is that we're
Speaker 1: told is radics pettus dialbolie the Devil's foot route. Okay,
Speaker 1: so why do they give an explanation as to why
Speaker 1: it's called that doesn't look like a little like demon foot,
Speaker 1: like a red foot with some tonails. Uh kind of,
Speaker 1: I mean sort of. It looks like a like a
Speaker 1: root and has devilish effects and uh. And I also
Speaker 1: remember in the Granada series, anytime they introduce it, they
Speaker 1: have kind of lists up, you know, African drumbeat in
Speaker 1: the background, which is really cool. Oh yeah, I'm recalling cheese.
Speaker 1: Do you remember we talked about this in the Wolf
Speaker 1: Spane episode I think, or maybe it was the Mushrooms episode.
Speaker 1: I went to the dog park one time and there
Speaker 1: was this weird fungus growing in the dog park. I
Speaker 1: took a picture of it and put it on the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook page, and immediately members
Speaker 1: of our audience were like, oh, that is such and
Speaker 1: such fungus, and it was like the devil's horn, I
Speaker 1: believe the term for it. So that's why I'm sort
Speaker 1: of imagining this this demon looking mushroom. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly is an authentic sounding title. It is
Speaker 1: a fictitious poison. However, there is a grounding and actual botany,
Speaker 1: so this was This is really cool to learn. I
Speaker 1: was not familiar with this story until until recently when
Speaker 1: I started looking into it. So, according to two different sources,
Speaker 1: I looked at Here Books Health, the book's Health and
Speaker 1: History blog of the New York Academy of Medicine, and
Speaker 1: as well as an article in the Guardian. According to them,
Speaker 1: Holmes creator Sir Arthur Cornan Doyle did some self experimentation
Speaker 1: of his own as a third year medical student at
Speaker 1: the University of Edinburgh with a substance known as gil simium,
Speaker 1: and he wrote about this in an in the in
Speaker 1: an eighteen seventy nine issue of the British Medical Journal.
Speaker 1: This is gonna turn out to be a common theme
Speaker 1: I think today as people just trying stuff out on themselves. Well,
Speaker 1: it kind of gets back to our Wolf Spain episode
Speaker 1: where we talked about the mythical origins and Chinese traditional medicine,
Speaker 1: that you had this one godlike being that kind of
Speaker 1: went around trying these things and determining what was poised
Speaker 1: because essentially that sort of trial and error and then
Speaker 1: you know the knowledge you passed on. That's that's where
Speaker 1: we learned that there are certain things you eat and
Speaker 1: certain ones you don't, and there's this gray area of
Speaker 1: stuff that you know exactly how much to apply and win.
Speaker 1: I think I'm glad that we're at a point in history,
Speaker 1: or I don't. I'm not in a situation where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I guess I should just try that, try, try a
Speaker 1: small amount of it and see what happens. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially with with the gil simium So there are three
Speaker 1: varieties of this Two are found in Central America, in
Speaker 1: one in southern China. It's a woody vine with bright
Speaker 1: yellow flowers. And the Asian variety, gil Simium elegans, is
Speaker 1: the most deadly of the three, and it's also known
Speaker 1: as heartbreak grass. So gil Simium was actually once used
Speaker 1: to treat migraines, but that but the key side effect
Speaker 1: was loss of muscle control. So this is also a
Speaker 1: common theme, which is that, like, the reason why we
Speaker 1: know about a lot of this stuff is because we
Speaker 1: used it to treat various ailments. Yeah right, but that
Speaker 1: too much of it, too much, many things, bad thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, too much of something from your spice rack
Speaker 1: will will give you dire consequences in some cases. So,
Speaker 1: prior to writing this paper and conducting the self experiment,
Speaker 1: uh Doyle had taken a tincture of this stuff to
Speaker 1: treat nerve pain. But for the experiment he took nine
Speaker 1: million leaders and he reported quote severe frontal headache with
Speaker 1: diarrhea and general lassitude. Okay, then he lassitude mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not familiar with that, that loose bowell syndrome. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: he's just kind of loose in the seat. I guess
Speaker 1: you would say, okay, alright. So then he up the
Speaker 1: dosage to twelve million leaders and at this point quote
Speaker 1: that diarrhea was so persistent and prostrating that I must stop.
Speaker 1: At twelve million leaders. I feel great depression and a
Speaker 1: severe frontal headache. The pulse was still normal, but weak.
Speaker 1: It's too bad he didn't write this into the Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes story. It's just like this story about these big
Speaker 1: these detectives having horrible diarrhea and headaches. Yeah, death death
Speaker 1: by or with diarrhea um would have made it more
Speaker 1: horrific in some ways, but he decided to sort of
Speaker 1: you know, weird fiction. I think I think made a
Speaker 1: classier so uh you know. The basic just here, though,
Speaker 1: is that s arthocon and Doyle was something of a
Speaker 1: poison enthusiast and he was a risk taker, so he
Speaker 1: conducted this experiment on himself. We we know now with
Speaker 1: the additional research into the matter, that an overdose of
Speaker 1: this stuff would result in dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, and convulsions,
Speaker 1: and higher doses could result in paralysis of the spinal
Speaker 1: cord and this would lead to a near total loss
Speaker 1: of muscular power and eventually asphyxia. Not a good way
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, it's not quite the madness and death
Speaker 1: of the Devil's Foot, but it's pretty bad. So. Gil
Speaker 1: Simium has been used as an analgesic and various homeopathic products,
Speaker 1: but the toxicity limits its usefulness. At the dawn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, was still being used in asthma and
Speaker 1: respiratory remedies, and it also factors into traditional Chinese medicine
Speaker 1: where it's used to treat pain. But it has allegedly
Speaker 1: been used as a deadly poison. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: this is where we end up with a couple of
Speaker 1: very recent cases of alleges to gyl simium poisoning, and
Speaker 1: they both took place in two thousand twelve. So, according
Speaker 1: to The Guardian, in two thousand twelve, the death of
Speaker 1: Chinese forestry tycoon Long Leon was linked to a quote
Speaker 1: poison cat stew containing gil simium. Is this a stew
Speaker 1: made of cat or a stew forecats, well, in this
Speaker 1: case made with cat and gil simium. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you occasionally find, you know, Chinese dishes that still have
Speaker 1: these these meats with Yeah, I'm aware from the time
Speaker 1: that I spent in Beijing. I remember that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff being on the menu occasionally, Okay, wanting to
Speaker 1: make sure for our audience. So he definitely ordered it
Speaker 1: with the cat. But if there is gil simium in it,
Speaker 1: he definitely did not order that part. Didn't That was
Speaker 1: some nefarious spice, right. So another case, and this one
Speaker 1: again is uh is alleged the two thousand twelve death
Speaker 1: of Russian businessman and whistleblower Alexander. This seems to be
Speaker 1: like a common at least like in terms of like
Speaker 1: news media where we're hearing about poisoning, the most is
Speaker 1: Russian whistle blowers. Yeah, I mean probably we could do
Speaker 1: we could do a whole episode just on espionage related poisoning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, like as I was looking up like different
Speaker 1: poisons to hit for this episode, so many of the
Speaker 1: examples kept coming up. It was like, oh, in the
Speaker 1: last ten years, you know, this Russian former diplomat was
Speaker 1: poison this journalist was poison Jadiyata. Now and in this case,
Speaker 1: as with some of these these others you're alluding to,
Speaker 1: it's not certain. Uh. The gall simium link it comes
Speaker 1: via a life insurance company ordered test two years after
Speaker 1: his death, and based on that it has been suggested
Speaker 1: that he was assassinated by Russian operatives. Wow. So, so
Speaker 1: I think that's a fabulous poison to kick off here,
Speaker 1: because we go from the fictional realm to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this tale of an author testing a real poison out
Speaker 1: on himself, and then to uh, you know, recent alleged
Speaker 1: poisonings in China and Russia. All right, well, I will
Speaker 1: add that index card to my recipe book. Uh and
Speaker 1: I will I will counter that with one to you.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of Spanish fly before? This is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing fourteen year old boys ask each other,
Speaker 1: as people who've listened to the show for a while. No,
Speaker 1: I actually grew up in Singapore, and you could kind
Speaker 1: of buy substances over there that you wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to find in like American malls. Right, And there
Speaker 1: were constantly students at my school talking about how they
Speaker 1: had purchased Spanish fly while they were on a trip
Speaker 1: to Malaysia or Indonesia or something like that. They'd like
Speaker 1: pull like a weird little vial out and it would
Speaker 1: just be some powder. And you know, fourteen year old boys,
Speaker 1: what's what's Spanish fly? Oh, it's this magic love potion
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is like, uh, put
Speaker 1: it on somebody or make sure that they eat it
Speaker 1: and they fall in love with you. That was the
Speaker 1: urban myth of this when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: Right Ironically, there's actually a bit of stand up from
Speaker 1: Bill Cosby from his early years about childhood tales of
Speaker 1: of Spanish Fly and how wonderful it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: So I'll just I'll just leave that there for everyone
Speaker 1: to consider. It is it's like a really weird thing,
Speaker 1: Like when I think back on it, that like we
Speaker 1: would sit around and kind of talk about this and
Speaker 1: obviously there's no scientific marrit behind that, as I will
Speaker 1: get into, but talk about it as like, oh, this
Speaker 1: that's a really intriguing thing about the world that I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that there's a substance that just makes somebody
Speaker 1: fall in love with you, right like like, but in
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful way, I guess to rebrand a poison
Speaker 1: for sexual assault. Well that's exactly it, right, Like I
Speaker 1: look back on that and I'm like, these these innocent
Speaker 1: boys around like the lunch table in the cafeteria are
Speaker 1: talking about this and you don't really realize. Then you
Speaker 1: extrapolated it out to Bill Cosby levels and you realize, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is horrible. You know. Now, Spanish
Speaker 1: fly is a real thing, but it's not what I
Speaker 1: was told when I was fourteen living in Singapore. Actually,
Speaker 1: what it is is something called can theridin and cam
Speaker 1: theradin is a substance that is derived from a subgroup
Speaker 1: of blister beetles and it can cause the skin to blister.
Speaker 1: This is where these bugs get their name. Specifically, the
Speaker 1: blister beetle is known as the Spanish fly or the
Speaker 1: lighta Vesicatoria, and it's common to a South European species
Speaker 1: from which can't theorides is extracted and commercially prepared by
Speaker 1: crushing the wing covers on the adults. Now there's reportedly
Speaker 1: Spanish fly that is found in northern Mediterranean regions, not
Speaker 1: just in Spain. Basically, these bugs secrete cantoried and from
Speaker 1: their mouths and there's in their joints. They have this
Speaker 1: milky substance that seeps out. It sounds really gross, but
Speaker 1: the male beetle uses this as a defense mechanism. And
Speaker 1: then here here's an interesting point. That leads to the
Speaker 1: myth the male gives the female this substance as a
Speaker 1: copulatory gift before they mate, so that might be like
Speaker 1: the origin of this whole thing. But it's actually quite poisonous.
Speaker 1: But despite how poisonous it is, it's used as a
Speaker 1: skin irritant and a diuretic, and yes, as an aphrodisiac
Speaker 1: in some cultures. The lethal dosage for an adult human
Speaker 1: of Spanish fly is about ten milligrams, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one Jamma Dermatology article reviewed for this episode, it argued
Speaker 1: that cantherdin should be re added to the medications that
Speaker 1: doctors currently use in their office. Basically, it's used they
Speaker 1: apply it topically to treat warts or something like molluscumb
Speaker 1: skin infections. In nineteen sixty two, however, here in the
Speaker 1: United States, it lost its FDA approval because manufacturers didn't
Speaker 1: submit their data about its efficacy, and it's expected to
Speaker 1: soon be back on what is called the f d
Speaker 1: a's Bulk Substances List, which permits physicians to use it
Speaker 1: in the office on individual patients. So presumably, if you
Speaker 1: came in you had a bad case, awards or something
Speaker 1: on your hand, your doctor would say well, you know it,
Speaker 1: I'll pull some of this Kent therap in out of
Speaker 1: the old cabinet here, We'll put it on there. It'll
Speaker 1: blister away these warts and then your skin will be
Speaker 1: free of this. Uh. The JAMMA article actually also says
Speaker 1: that they could not find any reports of Kent therapy
Speaker 1: and poisoning being caused by the application from a physician. Okay,
Speaker 1: So while this is really poisonous and physicians use it,
Speaker 1: it's also you know, traditionally being used safely by physicians now,
Speaker 1: very much like the poison that you introduced us to.
Speaker 1: It used to be used topically in Asian medicine, and
Speaker 1: they would use it to treat piles ulcers, venomous worms,
Speaker 1: and tuberculosis. Orally it was used to treat abdominal masses, rabies,
Speaker 1: and cancer. Huh. Yeah. It's also worth noting that this
Speaker 1: is very poisonous to horses as well as humans. So
Speaker 1: in fact, fields that are near horses are usually have
Speaker 1: to be surveyed to make sure that none of these
Speaker 1: beetles are in them, because if they get a dose
Speaker 1: of these, it can kill a horse. But where's this
Speaker 1: reputation of this aphrodisiac come from? Where did this? How
Speaker 1: did this myth get to my cafeteria table in school?
Speaker 1: It's still a mystery actually. Now, obviously I presented you
Speaker 1: with the you know, idea that because this male beetle
Speaker 1: gives it to the female beetle, maybe there's something to that.
Speaker 1: That's also thought to be because it causes a dilation
Speaker 1: of blood vessels, which allows an increased blood flow, and
Speaker 1: that would be useful for one human organ through what's
Speaker 1: known as priapism. This is essentially when the penis remains erect,
Speaker 1: non sexually for hours without stimulation. This is a word
Speaker 1: that I learned for this episode. Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: occasionally see this, Uh, this will come up in terms
Speaker 1: of say, a bicycle accident could Yeah, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a pleasant experience. That's like the medical term for something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you come into an emergency room and that
Speaker 1: is going on, that's what they should refer to it as.
Speaker 1: So it's purported that Henry the Fourth and the Marquis
Speaker 1: Dessade both used Spanish fly. In fact, it said that
Speaker 1: the Marquis Desade poisoned prostitutes with candles that contained it
Speaker 1: in order to increase their sexual response. So based on
Speaker 1: everything that I've read of and by the Marquis assad
Speaker 1: that sounds right on point, but also sounds awful, right.
Speaker 1: So the way that this essentially works, the intense irritation
Speaker 1: and blistering it causes is incredibly unpleasant, and when you
Speaker 1: ingest it, that same blistering effect happens in the intestinal track.
Speaker 1: This causes severe hemorrhaging. It leads to the vomiting of blood,
Speaker 1: darkened urine, and bloody stool. There is also a burning
Speaker 1: of the mouth, difficulty swallowing, nausea, seizures, and cardiac abnormalities.
Speaker 1: There is no antidote to this, and death is painful
Speaker 1: and rapid. Do you Essentially it sounds like you're putting
Speaker 1: like battery acid in your throat. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: sexy about this at all, no camp therodin has no
Speaker 1: odor and it's colorless. So this is like the perfect
Speaker 1: kind of thing to use as a poison, right. It
Speaker 1: also with stains degradation by heat or drying, so it's
Speaker 1: difficult to remove it, Like if you spilt it on something,
Speaker 1: it's not that easy to get rid of. Now, there's
Speaker 1: this story about a guy named Arthur Ford and he
Speaker 1: worked at a chemical manufacturer in London, and he really
Speaker 1: wanted to get one of his employees to fall in
Speaker 1: love with him. He wanted to leave his life, and
Speaker 1: I think that this was like an administrative assistant who
Speaker 1: worked for him or something like that. So he took can'
Speaker 1: theradin from the chemical manufacturer's storage area and he spiked
Speaker 1: coconut ice with it, and then he gave it to
Speaker 1: all his office employees. So this is this is where
Speaker 1: like these urban legends come from and then go horribly awry.
Speaker 1: Two women died, including the one he was trying to
Speaker 1: get to fall in love with him, and he himself
Speaker 1: was hospitalized but then recovered. When they investigated this, they
Speaker 1: found up to ten times the lethal dose of km'
Speaker 1: theradin in the victims. Guess what punishment he got for this? Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I should hope they just really put him
Speaker 1: away for two murders would be a horrible poison five years,
Speaker 1: you got five years. It's actually thought by medical researchers
Speaker 1: that cam therapin poisoning may actually be a more common
Speaker 1: cause of morbidity than is generally recognized, So we basically
Speaker 1: aren't equipped to recognize this in all situations. So it's possible,
Speaker 1: like maybe some of these uh vials of supposed Spanish
Speaker 1: fly that people are buying actually have some kan theratin
Speaker 1: in them and could least lead to poisoning events. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here's another story based around this. In nineteen two,
Speaker 1: a doctor in the United Kingdom tried using kantheratin on
Speaker 1: children and he wanted to use it to test against
Speaker 1: rheumatic fever to see what would happen. It had previously
Speaker 1: been thought to work as a treatment for rheumatic fever,
Speaker 1: especially when like as a symptom of that the liquid
Speaker 1: would build up around a human heart. So this doctor
Speaker 1: he would use the substance to blister the skin on
Speaker 1: these children's torsos, and then he would snip away this
Speaker 1: blistered skin, uh and he dressed the wound and he
Speaker 1: would note, oh, well, the wound would heal in a
Speaker 1: few days. He tested around forty children in this experiment
Speaker 1: without their consent or knowledge. So like he would just
Speaker 1: I guess say like, okay, well we're gonna try this
Speaker 1: medicine now, and it would burn them, cause these horrible blisters,
Speaker 1: and he would cut the blisters off, and essentially that
Speaker 1: was as far as he got with his research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, As I said before, there's no antidote for this.
Speaker 1: It can be treated topically with acetone ether, fatty soap,
Speaker 1: or alcohol, and essentially these help dissolve and dilute it.
Speaker 1: So you know, you spill some of this stuff on
Speaker 1: you before it starts blistering you. You you put that on.
Speaker 1: Hopefully it helps dissolve it. But if you ingest it,
Speaker 1: there's only support measures available. So look, hopefully none of
Speaker 1: you out there are rushing out to go buy this stuff.
Speaker 1: It is an entire urban myth. I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: glad I never got my hands on any of this stuff.
Speaker 1: I never heard of any poisoning incidents in my school
Speaker 1: and this was going on. I think mainly like what
Speaker 1: these guys were selling down at the market was probably
Speaker 1: just like they would literally take like a household fly,
Speaker 1: grind it up into dust and sell it to some
Speaker 1: duction for five bucks. You know, Um, they would dry
Speaker 1: it out first, I would assume. But if there's any
Speaker 1: point where, for whatever reason, you think that like there's
Speaker 1: a danger that either you or somebody around you has
Speaker 1: ingested this, you're supposed to swallow generous amounts of water
Speaker 1: and avoid fatty foods like milk, And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because fatty foods will increase the absorption of the
Speaker 1: cantheritin in your system. You also don't want to induce vomiting.
Speaker 1: So some people think like, well, oh, you swallowed this,
Speaker 1: just vomited back. But what happens if you do that
Speaker 1: is it will further damage the esophagus on its way out,
Speaker 1: So it goes down, it causes this blistering effect, and
Speaker 1: then if you try to vomit it back out, it
Speaker 1: causes the burning all over again. Yeah, this is really
Speaker 1: nasty stuff, and it somehow has this reputation as like
Speaker 1: this bizarre love drug. Well again, we can't. We can't
Speaker 1: stress strongly enough do not obtain Spanish fly and certainly
Speaker 1: do not administer a Spanish fly. Yeah. Absolutely an urban legend,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be an extremely effective way to
Speaker 1: poison somebody. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to explore two
Speaker 1: more of our six deadly poisons. All Right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So you have a word written down here and it
Speaker 1: looks like goo, yes, Google, which is in this case,
Speaker 1: it is a a Chinese poison of sort of mythic
Speaker 1: and folkloric origin. I like the like, if you extrapolate
Speaker 1: that to our word goo g o o, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the perfect name for a poison, you know, like, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: would you use just some Google Well, you know this, uh,
Speaker 1: this whole episode that I'm going to discuss here reminds
Speaker 1: me a bit of the comic that you turned me onto.
Speaker 1: Orc Stain. Oh. Yeah, there's a lot of poisons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a whole ride that lives in I think
Speaker 1: they live in the mountains or the jungle deep Jungles,
Speaker 1: and they have this fantastic abilities with poison. They're able
Speaker 1: to shoot the orc assassins with a poison that makes
Speaker 1: their head explode, that sort of thing. Yeah. If if
Speaker 1: you're unfamiliar with this and you're curious about it, it's
Speaker 1: a comic series by a guy named James Stoko, and
Speaker 1: Orc Stain is essentially like a I guess high fantasy,
Speaker 1: but pretty much all the characters in it are orcs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has a very almost kind of gonzo style
Speaker 1: to it that reminds me a little bit of I mean,
Speaker 1: it has kind of that sort of heavy metal energy
Speaker 1: to it. It's a little bit a bit of that
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, what is a two thousand
Speaker 1: a d kind of sensibility. I think that's the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that influenced him. Yeah, you know, I should
Speaker 1: mention this to you, but I'll tell our audience about
Speaker 1: it while we're here too. He has since gone on
Speaker 1: to do Godzilla mini series that I highly recommend. Imagine
Speaker 1: that guy doing god and then he just started doing
Speaker 1: an Aliens mini series. It's called Aliens Dead Orbit and man,
Speaker 1: his take on the Aliens is so bizarre. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he his uh use of body are and biology
Speaker 1: is wonderful, So I imagine that is as well. Keep
Speaker 1: that in mind as we roll forward here. So I
Speaker 1: found this, uh, this excellent source on Google in this
Speaker 1: article by A Norma Diamond that was published in an
Speaker 1: edition of Ethnology. It's titled The Meal and Poison Interactions
Speaker 1: on China's Southwest Frontier, and it does a fabulous job
Speaker 1: just breaking down this concept of goo. So a lot
Speaker 1: of it concerns folk tales and superstitions surrounding poison and
Speaker 1: in the use of these superstitions against frontiers people and
Speaker 1: when women in particular, So we're talking about Han Chinese
Speaker 1: tales of the male people. The male are one of
Speaker 1: China's fifty five recognized ethnic groups, and these this would
Speaker 1: be mostly in the mountains of southern China. Now, the frontier,
Speaker 1: Diamond points out, was this was a frightening place for
Speaker 1: frontiers tend to be on the edges of of empire.
Speaker 1: So there was periodic unrest because it was a frontier
Speaker 1: after all, and this was there were there's also a
Speaker 1: place where one encountered a different ethnic people with seemingly
Speaker 1: barbaric ways. And finally, she points out there were a
Speaker 1: number of endemic diseases such as encephalitis, meningitis, dysentery, leprosy.
Speaker 1: So people, you know, would travel out to the frontier
Speaker 1: and they would come back with tales or oh the
Speaker 1: people were hostile and strange and they're all these weird diseases.
Speaker 1: They're horrible things happening to people's bodies there, and uh
Speaker 1: and and so you end up with a superstitious tradition
Speaker 1: that is very much grounded in um xenophobia really and
Speaker 1: also in in in a good bit of misogyny. As
Speaker 1: we'll explore man these poisons already, we're just just on
Speaker 1: our third poison, we're already in some really dangerous social
Speaker 1: and cultural cultural territory. Yeah, because they would get into this, uh,
Speaker 1: this line of thinking to where the Meal were not
Speaker 1: only a people they used poison, but they themselves were
Speaker 1: poisonous and like they had to poison people to keep
Speaker 1: the poison from like eating them up. Wow, what a
Speaker 1: what an odd form of demonization. So you had two
Speaker 1: main forms of the Google folk tail, and these are
Speaker 1: from the Tang dynasty and this is around six eighteen
Speaker 1: uh CE and onward. Uh. The first of these is
Speaker 1: the SoC idea of the five poisonous creatures. So in
Speaker 1: this one, Google was simply a quasi magical poison that
Speaker 1: was created by sealing the five poisonous creatures a snake,
Speaker 1: a centipede, a toad, a scorpion, and a lizard inside
Speaker 1: of a jar. And you keep it this jar in
Speaker 1: a dark place for a year. Sounds reasonable, all right.
Speaker 1: Then you you open up that jar and you find
Speaker 1: that essentially there's a battle royale in that jar, but
Speaker 1: the creatures eating each other until there's only one creature left.
Speaker 1: And then if it of course dies and withers in
Speaker 1: in the container and So the ideas that you open
Speaker 1: the jar up and then you take the contents and
Speaker 1: you ground them down, you make a powder, and this
Speaker 1: is the goo poison that causes sickness and death. Holy cow,
Speaker 1: Yeah that sounds vile. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who would come out on top of this, uh, five
Speaker 1: poisonous creatures jar. I guess. I mean, my gut instinct
Speaker 1: is to say the scorpion, but uh, maybe the snake.
Speaker 1: I guess the snake if it's gonna actually eat everything. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: but I don't you know, a lot of logistical concerns coming.
Speaker 1: You open it up and there's just this happy snake
Speaker 1: with a full belly. So um. So that's one version
Speaker 1: of it. But then there there there are other variants
Speaker 1: as well. There's this idea of the goose spirit. So
Speaker 1: in this variant, you have a woman of the male
Speaker 1: and she takes, she keeps a snake, a toad or tortoise,
Speaker 1: or a bird. She gets it in a secret chest
Speaker 1: or a wall compartment, she feeds it. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that if her husband or lover deserts her for another,
Speaker 1: then goose spirit, maintained by this practice, goes forth and
Speaker 1: poison him. So it's used to ensure faithfulness or to
Speaker 1: seek revenge. And Diamond also explains that there's this idea
Speaker 1: that the use of a goose spirit is away for
Speaker 1: the poisonous figure of the male female to purge herself
Speaker 1: of her own inner poison. The woman it was said
Speaker 1: she would she had read, she would would have reddened eyes,
Speaker 1: and she would become john too swollen and lose her
Speaker 1: appetite if she didn't use her poisonous powers. So if
Speaker 1: she were to use it to blight a tree, then
Speaker 1: she'd be protected for three months. If she used it
Speaker 1: on an ox or a pig, she'd be protected for
Speaker 1: a year, and if she used it on a human being,
Speaker 1: three years. Okay, So this is essentially, uh, this section
Speaker 1: of China's version of witchcraft and familiars. It's like their
Speaker 1: cultural version of demonizing women. Yeah, it's a it's ay. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we're talking about poison themed witches here. Yeah, she's okay. Now,
Speaker 1: if we set aside witchcraft offten xenophobia and so forth, uh,
Speaker 1: we still do have some accounts that point to believable
Speaker 1: use of poisons by the Mayo. So, according according to Diamond,
Speaker 1: we have we have the following candidates to consider, because
Speaker 1: again there are they do seem to be accounts of
Speaker 1: them actually using poisons as in their you know, in combat,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So arsenic was readily available, and this is
Speaker 1: the so called king of poisons, and it's long head
Speaker 1: of place in traditional Chinese medicine, imagining like arsenic in
Speaker 1: like an aluminum can, like beer of poisons, uh and
Speaker 1: and poisons. Various poisons were used in hunting by the meal.
Speaker 1: So you had the one particularly's really interesting, the sap
Speaker 1: of an atterriss toxiccaria, a tree that's found in southern
Speaker 1: yunn and in Guangzi. And this is uh. This is
Speaker 1: known as poison mother. And what you have here is
Speaker 1: a brownish red dried juice sometimes mixed with snake venom.
Speaker 1: And it was widely traded in the area around Nanning
Speaker 1: of where and I've I've been. I've been to Nanning,
Speaker 1: That's one of the places I've visited a few years
Speaker 1: years back. But I did not go to the poison
Speaker 1: You drink any snake, but did not drink snake. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any occasion when I lived in China
Speaker 1: to have just any poisons either. But it seems like
Speaker 1: this is one of those things though, right. It's like
Speaker 1: it's really easy from a Western perspective to hear this
Speaker 1: stuff and be like, oh my gosh, like there's just
Speaker 1: poisons all over the place there, but we've got our
Speaker 1: own version. Oh yeah, there are plenty of poisons around here. Now.
Speaker 1: This does remind me of, particularly of a Thai tradition
Speaker 1: of their being like a whiskey with us with a poison,
Speaker 1: like a cobra or poisonous snake. Okay, yeah, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like the idea of what is it with tequila
Speaker 1: and you've got the worm? Yeah, and isn't there another one?
Speaker 1: It's not tequila, but there's another one with a scorpion.
Speaker 1: I think you can tell. I'm not a drinker, but
Speaker 1: but it's reminiscent of what we're talking about with the
Speaker 1: with the google here. Yeah, yeah, now that anitarrist toxicaria.
Speaker 1: It's also known as the Boys an Arrow Tree in China.
Speaker 1: It's because it's saying it's so deadly that they had
Speaker 1: this saying seven up, eight down, nine death. Because bear
Speaker 1: with me here, once you're hit with it, you can
Speaker 1: only take seven steps uphill. Eight downhill or nine on
Speaker 1: even terrain before you fall dead. That's a great like
Speaker 1: a movie for for like a martial arts movie or
Speaker 1: so yeah like that, or or like a video game,
Speaker 1: or or even like a band themes fan indeed, So
Speaker 1: what happens here with with this particular poison is that
Speaker 1: the sap from this tree, the poison arrow tree, seems
Speaker 1: to affect the activity of muscle membrane and heart muscle contraction.
Speaker 1: So you end up with death by cardiac arrest. So
Speaker 1: Diamond says, quote, a fatal dose causes a falling heart rate,
Speaker 1: respiratory difficulties, muscular weakness, paralysis, convulsions, and finally death within
Speaker 1: a short period of time. A sub lethal dose passes
Speaker 1: out of the body fairly quickly. The victim may experienced nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches,
Speaker 1: and visual disturbances. So the problem here is that that
Speaker 1: doesn't match up with some of the descriptions of Google, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the symptoms are different. Yeah, so other things to consider here.
Speaker 1: The meal can obtain the commercial strychnine around the dawn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, but before that they had access
Speaker 1: to our old friend asinite or wolfs bang oh, okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I remember us talking about that in that episode two,
Speaker 1: that there was some thought that they were using that
Speaker 1: actually wasn't it on arrowheads? Yeah yeah, Uh, So it's
Speaker 1: possible that they were using that for goo. However, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty common aspect of traditional medicine at the
Speaker 1: time and remains so. And again the symptoms don't necessarily
Speaker 1: match up with all the tales. It's also possible that
Speaker 1: there was some unknown herb that was that factored into
Speaker 1: these poisonings. Uh, you know, something that historians, especially Western historians,
Speaker 1: have missed or I mean, and maybe easy even been forgotten,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. It seems it seems more likely
Speaker 1: that we're looking at one of those earlier examples, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of the poison arrow tree coming into play,
Speaker 1: for instance. So I think it's fascinating how human beings
Speaker 1: over history take these things as simple as like a
Speaker 1: being or a tree or a mushroom, and we create
Speaker 1: these entire systems of like morality around them, right, like
Speaker 1: in this instance, like this witchcraft idea, right, and then
Speaker 1: in my next example, my next poison one, this is
Speaker 1: like an entire way of of judging wrongdoing. It's called
Speaker 1: the ordeal being and uh it is known by the
Speaker 1: Latin term phiso stigma venenosum sounds very hairy, potter a.
Speaker 1: It's an actual thing. So numerous West African tribes used
Speaker 1: they used to depend on something that's called the caliber
Speaker 1: being and this was in something called a trial by
Speaker 1: ordeal and it basically it attempted to determine people's guilt
Speaker 1: or innocence in an ordeal that they left to divine control.
Speaker 1: And so this was subsequently known as the ordeal being
Speaker 1: or also as the lie detector being for this reason. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what would happen is the tribes would feed numerous poison
Speaker 1: seeds to the accused to determine if they were witches,
Speaker 1: sound familiar murderers, or possessed by evil spirits. And if
Speaker 1: they were quote innocent, then God would allow them to
Speaker 1: live and they would vomit the beans back up. If not,
Speaker 1: the sentence of death was immediately carried out by the beans.
Speaker 1: So essentially, here's this poison being. If it kills you,
Speaker 1: then you deserved it. Uh. If it doesn't, then well
Speaker 1: that's God telling us that you're innocent. Basically, we have
Speaker 1: the same scenario as like push the witch off a
Speaker 1: clip for put the witch under the water. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if she lives, well, then I guess God thinks you're okay.
Speaker 1: Exactly Now. The administration of this was known locally as
Speaker 1: chopnut and it was discovered by the rest of the
Speaker 1: world when missionaries from Scotland arrived in eighteen forty six.
Speaker 1: Then the bean made its way back to Scotland, where
Speaker 1: it was studied. A reverend there discovered that the local
Speaker 1: king had actually ordered the destruction of the vine that
Speaker 1: these seeds were grown on so that he could maintain
Speaker 1: a monopoly on the administration of justice. So he essentially
Speaker 1: made it so that only his area could obtain these beans,
Speaker 1: so everybody had to come to him to decide whether
Speaker 1: or not somebody was innocent or guilty based on whether
Speaker 1: they could use the beans or not. You know, this
Speaker 1: is fascinating because it makes me think of Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle because it's the time period, is right, Uh
Speaker 1: he was he And we mentioned that the University of
Speaker 1: Edinburgh and this has an African you know, like tribal
Speaker 1: ritual origin, where as the Gylsimium did not what the
Speaker 1: gylsimium was tied to South America or China, so I
Speaker 1: can't help, but wonder I mean, he he would have
Speaker 1: being if he was truly a poison nut, probably been
Speaker 1: aware of this. Yeah, well, let's let's learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about it and then maybe we can we
Speaker 1: can see if it's connected more to that Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: story than the gyl simium was. It's also said that
Speaker 1: there was a form of dueling that was used with
Speaker 1: these beans, and apparently what they would do is two
Speaker 1: opponents would divide a bean and each of them would
Speaker 1: eat one half of it, and the quantity was essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, the only was known it could kill either
Speaker 1: of the adversaries, So even half a bean was enough
Speaker 1: to kill a man. So sometimes they would both die,
Speaker 1: sometimes one of them would die, sometimes neither of them
Speaker 1: would die. But more often than not, these beans just
Speaker 1: killed you. So it's like a really high stakes drinking gang. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the calibar bean is actually the seed of a
Speaker 1: climbing lugaminous plant that's known as phiso Stigma venanos um,
Speaker 1: and it is poisonous to human beings when it's chewed.
Speaker 1: But hold on, if the whole being is swallowed intact,
Speaker 1: it might prevent the release of its toxins. So this
Speaker 1: is apparently like the trick right like, if you ever
Speaker 1: find yourself in this situation with the ordeal being just
Speaker 1: don't chew and then you've got like a better chance.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that you're gonna live through it, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's more likely to release its toxins if
Speaker 1: you chew it up. Interesting. So these can be found
Speaker 1: in the coastal area of southeastern Nigeria that's known as Calibar,
Speaker 1: and like I said, they were first noticed in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six. It took actually until eighteen sixty one for
Speaker 1: botanists to name it, and they named it for the
Speaker 1: snooping beak like solid appendage that's at the end of
Speaker 1: the stigma on these vines. And it isn't until the
Speaker 1: rainy season there, which lasts from June through September, that
Speaker 1: the plant produces it's it's best most toxic beans. And
Speaker 1: the first medical student who investigated its effects on himself
Speaker 1: was a guy named Robert Christensen, and he's the one
Speaker 1: who actually named it too. There's nothing in the external
Speaker 1: aspect of this being whether it's its taste or its
Speaker 1: smell to distinguish it from other harmless legume seeds. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's known to have been eaten by children accidentally and
Speaker 1: killed them. So this is again like seems it's got that,
Speaker 1: you know, qualifications for great poison. Right, it's odorless, it's
Speaker 1: hard to detect. Uh, it's we're about to find out
Speaker 1: like how it kills people. It's part of a religious
Speaker 1: right as well. Yeah, So the reason why it's poisonous
Speaker 1: is because there there's a presence in it of something
Speaker 1: called phiso stigmine alkaloid, and this acts on the human
Speaker 1: nervous system pretty much the same way nerve gas does.
Speaker 1: It disrupts communication between the nervous system and our organs.
Speaker 1: This subsequently leads to contraction of the pupils, profew salivation, convulsions, seizures,
Speaker 1: spontaneous urination and defecation, loss of control of the respiratory system,
Speaker 1: and finally death bi asphyxiation. This seems to be like
Speaker 1: the common and result of these poisons as asphyxiation. It
Speaker 1: also affects the reflex functions of our spinal cords, and
Speaker 1: in fatal cases it's going to paralyze the sensory columns
Speaker 1: in your spinal cord as well. Now it should be
Speaker 1: noted that this has no action on unbroken skin. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you unlike the Spanish fly stuff that I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, doesn't cause like a blistering effect
Speaker 1: if you just put one of these on your skin. Okay,
Speaker 1: But ophthalmologists used to use small doses of this. They
Speaker 1: would derive phiso stig mine out of these beans, and
Speaker 1: they would use it to make patients pupils contract. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like essentially they would really you know, boil this
Speaker 1: down to its essence, use a tiny, tiny amount and
Speaker 1: then drop it into your eyes. Well, just another case.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on most of these examples. The
Speaker 1: you know, one one individual's medicine as another's poison, depending
Speaker 1: on the dosage. Yeah. Yeah, So in recent years, the
Speaker 1: chemical has actually been applied to helping paralyzed men who
Speaker 1: want children. Now, this is where it gets interesting, especially
Speaker 1: in comparison to the Spanish fly we talked about earlier. So,
Speaker 1: because this being affects the autonomic nervous system, it allows
Speaker 1: men who are otherwise paralyzed to ejaculate when they normally can't.
Speaker 1: So this allows them to become fathers. Like normally, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're married, they they're you know, concerned like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be able to be a father,
Speaker 1: you know, to my partner's child. But with this being
Speaker 1: if it's applied correctly, they can. So they see strange
Speaker 1: derivations off of this thing that has this cultural history
Speaker 1: of being used for dueling or judging whether somebody is
Speaker 1: a witch or not. Now scientists today are actually conducting
Speaker 1: at ease to see if the alkaloid here can aid
Speaker 1: in reversing things like Alzheimer's disease because it affects neurotransmitters
Speaker 1: in the brain. And weirdly, it's also an effective antidote
Speaker 1: for another poison, and this is like one of the
Speaker 1: more more common poisons, a tropa belladonna also known as
Speaker 1: night shade essence of nightshade, So this is actually a
Speaker 1: cure for poisoning by belladonna. Finally, it's being studied to
Speaker 1: see if phiso stigmine could be used as a way
Speaker 1: to block nerve gas, so like saren. For instance, if
Speaker 1: you're in a situation where you're surrounded by saren, if
Speaker 1: you take this it might be able to bind to
Speaker 1: the same kind of enzymes that saren binds too, So
Speaker 1: it's hoped that the right dosage will block the worst
Speaker 1: effects of the saren without causing lasting damage to the victim.
Speaker 1: This is just fascinating, all these apparent ways that you
Speaker 1: could use this thing that is essentially like an evil being.
Speaker 1: And it makes me think of our small Bard episode
Speaker 1: talking about the importance of gene uh and particularly seed banks,
Speaker 1: because any any number of these uh, these uh, these
Speaker 1: biological specimens out there, uh, they may have hidden properties
Speaker 1: that we haven't quite exploited, you know, oh definitely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you think about it like this was didn't
Speaker 1: even start being explored really into like a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty hundred and seventy years ago by Scottish uh missionaries essentially, right,
Speaker 1: So there's like potentially decades of research that could go
Speaker 1: into something that's just this ordeal being, and we could
Speaker 1: find all of these medicinal ways to use them. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take one final break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, two more poisons and really that should
Speaker 1: do yet. All right, we're back. So if you decided, um,
Speaker 1: how which poison you're gonna use yet by myself. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: man on whom I don't know, I guess I still
Speaker 1: want that one plenty was talking about that's just gonna
Speaker 1: be so uh, this one, I'm not sure this is
Speaker 1: the this is the one necessarily, but uh, but it's
Speaker 1: one that definitely pops up on other TV shows, that
Speaker 1: being rice and if I don't know, if you watched
Speaker 1: Breaking Bad, but rison shows up quite a bit. YEA.
Speaker 1: So ricin is derived from the castor being plant rice
Speaker 1: Cinnus communists the same the same species that's responsible for
Speaker 1: all that castor oil in our medicine and even our
Speaker 1: food products. You grind the beans into oil and then
Speaker 1: you're left with a mash byproduct, and that's where you
Speaker 1: find the toxin. It's not a fast acting toxin, so
Speaker 1: symptoms here take between four and twenty four hours to
Speaker 1: set in. But ricin is highly lethal to humans. A
Speaker 1: single milligram of the stuff is deadly evenhaled or ingested. Now,
Speaker 1: long before Walter White plotted to poison you know, half
Speaker 1: the cast of Breaking Bad with this stuff, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military actually patented a method to purify rice and toxin
Speaker 1: for the coming Great War. For the First World War.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, okay, but but here's the thing. How do
Speaker 1: you deploy it on a battlefield. Yeah. It's not like
Speaker 1: you can just mash up a bunch of beans and
Speaker 1: throw them at your enemies. Yeah, you can't. You can't
Speaker 1: have like a you know, a secret agent can only
Speaker 1: poison so many people. You can't do that to take
Speaker 1: out an entire you know, groove of soldiers. The Hague
Speaker 1: Convention of e ended up stepping in and prohibiting the
Speaker 1: use of rice and as a projectile coding, uh, plus
Speaker 1: other dispersal methods that ultimately proved ineffective, because that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that you encounter with with a lot
Speaker 1: of potential bioweapons is Okay, the the substance itself is
Speaker 1: deadly under certain circumstances, but that doesn't mean it can
Speaker 1: really effectively be weaponized and deployed against, especially against like
Speaker 1: a man troops situation or you know, or a major
Speaker 1: center of population. Wow. Okay, So I'm thinking by projectile coating,
Speaker 1: we're talking about bullets. So you literally coat bullets and ricing.
Speaker 1: That's that is what is specifically banned. Yeah, Now, as
Speaker 1: you might imagine rice and occasionally pops up in small
Speaker 1: acts of terrorism, but that it makes it an ineffective
Speaker 1: mass terror weapon as well. According to a study from
Speaker 1: the New Zealand National Poison Center, terrorists would need several
Speaker 1: metric tons of rice and in order to in order
Speaker 1: to target a large population. So it's a lot of beans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of beans. And it's again it's an
Speaker 1: example of this is a poison that can be used
Speaker 1: with deadly efficiency on an individual basis, but it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you would necessarily be able to
Speaker 1: dump into the water. So this isn't what we refer
Speaker 1: to as a chemical of mass destruction necessarily. Now, um.
Speaker 1: There there is one case though, that's pretty interesting, where
Speaker 1: it was effective in an assassination poisoning. Uh and this
Speaker 1: occurred in nineteen sixty nine when an assassin fired a
Speaker 1: rice and laced pellet much less like our our above
Speaker 1: example into the leg of defected Bulgarian writer uh Gegory Markovy. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so like, h this is just blowing my mind, Like
Speaker 1: the idea obviously, like you see this in fantasy stuff
Speaker 1: like Game of Thrones, right, like, oh, I'll coat my
Speaker 1: sword with a poison or actually I think, doesn't um,
Speaker 1: one of the guys from Dorn he puts like some
Speaker 1: poison on his spear or something like that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I just never thought that would
Speaker 1: work on high velocity projectiles. A poison bullet, but a
Speaker 1: poison pellet in this case. But we have examples to
Speaker 1: run through just what happens with rice and poisoning. If
Speaker 1: you inhale it, there's a respiratory distress, fever, cough, nausea,
Speaker 1: a tightness in the chest, and it's gonna lead to
Speaker 1: a heavy breathing, low blood blood pressure, and respiratory failure.
Speaker 1: If it's ingested, then you get vomiting, bloody diarrhea, severe dehydration,
Speaker 1: low blood pressure, seizures, organ failure, central nervous system problems, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So either way, you shake it. And then of course,
Speaker 1: if you if you get shot into your leg as well, Um,
Speaker 1: some some bad stuff happens to your body, and it
Speaker 1: will happen between you know, in a four and a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour on set period. Wow. So pretty much
Speaker 1: of the six that we've chosen here today, most of
Speaker 1: them have derived from some kind of whether it's a
Speaker 1: beetle or a bean, something that's just kind of crawling
Speaker 1: around in our natural environment, something that grows naturally in
Speaker 1: the world and exists. Yeah, they're all organic. You can
Speaker 1: feel good and and have and using an organic poison,
Speaker 1: but they just don't write exactly. Yeah, you can sell
Speaker 1: them at whole Foods, but they don't mix with our
Speaker 1: body chemistry, like just the science basically turns your body
Speaker 1: against you. Right. This next one though, is and I
Speaker 1: have to say part of my reason for choosing this
Speaker 1: was because of the term heavy metal. So it's actual.
Speaker 1: It's an actual element that can can kill you. And
Speaker 1: the reason I found out about this was because of
Speaker 1: a movie called The Young Poisoner's Handbook. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you haven't seen it. We talked about this,
Speaker 1: but if anybody out there has seen, it's this interesting
Speaker 1: indie movie from the nineties. I want to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you mentioned earlier, I had no idea like
Speaker 1: where to place in the timeline. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: say I saw it in the late nineties. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it is a true story about a guy named Graham Young.
Speaker 1: He was a British teenager in nineteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: he used thallium to kill his stepmother and then sickened
Speaker 1: several other of his family members. And then he was
Speaker 1: found guilty of that. He was placed in an institution.
Speaker 1: Then he got released from that institution in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: and you know what he did. He promptly went and
Speaker 1: killed two of his co workers with the same poisoning.
Speaker 1: He seriously injured two more with thallium poisoning. So this
Speaker 1: is a guy who was like essed with thallium and
Speaker 1: he died in nine himself from a heart attack while
Speaker 1: he was in prison for his second term. Now, thallium
Speaker 1: is a heavy metal. This means it's a member of
Speaker 1: a group of elements that have similar chemistry to one another.
Speaker 1: This includes lead, arsenic in timany, mercury, and cadmium. All
Speaker 1: of these are toxic and they tend to accumulate inside
Speaker 1: human tissues when they're digested. Furthermore, they pass along up
Speaker 1: the food chain when they're consumed. Right, So, uh, let's
Speaker 1: say a rabbit gets arsenic poisoning and then you eat
Speaker 1: the rabbit, you're then ingesting the arsenic yourself. To write, so,
Speaker 1: thallium is a known poisonous substance and it's commonly found
Speaker 1: in rat poison and insecticides, and it's nicknamed the poisoner's poison,
Speaker 1: and the other nickname it has is inheritance powder. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But since the nineteen seventy is it's been strictly controlled
Speaker 1: because of how toxic it is. It's colorless, it's odorless,
Speaker 1: and it's tasteless as well as being soluble in water.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a soft gray metal that resembles tin, and
Speaker 1: it's so soft, in fact, that you can cut it
Speaker 1: with a knife. Now, thallium attacks the human nervous system
Speaker 1: and our internal organs, and this causes hair loss, vomiting,
Speaker 1: and diarrhea. I think all six of these poisons. Of
Speaker 1: diarrhea is a common denominator. And yeah, I guess it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good symptom of your your body just giving
Speaker 1: up the ghost. Yeah, it's easy to confuse the symptoms
Speaker 1: of thallium poisoning with viral diseases like influence of For instance,
Speaker 1: only a dose of one gram can lead to death.
Speaker 1: So three days after you poison a victim, they'll start
Speaker 1: suffering headaches, muscle problems, convulsions, they might go into a coma,
Speaker 1: they might experience delirium or dementia, maybe even psychosis. It
Speaker 1: acts slowly compared to a lot of the other poisons
Speaker 1: we've been talking about today, and it's very painful. It's
Speaker 1: especially attractive to poisoners because the symptoms resemble other illnesses
Speaker 1: and conditions, so you can usually get away with saying like, well,
Speaker 1: it looks like somebody has the flu, and then they
Speaker 1: dropped dead a day later. Other symptoms include alteration of
Speaker 1: the brain, a fast beating heart that doesn't effectively pump blood,
Speaker 1: skin eruptions, swelling and sores in the mouth, skin atrophy,
Speaker 1: and something that's referred to as knees lines. This is
Speaker 1: m e E. These are when on your nails you
Speaker 1: get these like white lines across your fingernails. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of this before, but apparently that's a symptom of
Speaker 1: thallium poisoning. Uh. And you can also have just a
Speaker 1: general physical sensitivity from your skin. There's also degenerative changes
Speaker 1: in the heart, liver, and kidneys, as well as bone
Speaker 1: marrow depression. The gastro intestinal phase of this poisoning that
Speaker 1: comes before the neurological phase, so that occurs anywhere from
Speaker 1: twenty four to forty eight hours after ingestion, then the
Speaker 1: neurological symptoms. Those can take up to two to five days.
Speaker 1: The big sign that it's thallium and not something else
Speaker 1: is alopecia, meaning hair loss when your hair starts falling out,
Speaker 1: and this can occur up to two to three weeks later,
Speaker 1: but death actually can occur within five to seven days.
Speaker 1: It just depends the body and the dosage it's within
Speaker 1: it based on you know whether or not your hair
Speaker 1: is gonna fall out before you die. Essentially. Now, thallium
Speaker 1: was isolated independently by two chemists in eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: We're talking about William Crooks and Claude august LeMay. But
Speaker 1: it was technically discovered by Crooks, and it's found naturally
Speaker 1: in things like crook site, laurendite, hutch In site, some pyrites,
Speaker 1: and manganese nodules that are found on the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: It can be recovered heard by taking the oars and
Speaker 1: roasting them in connection with the production of sulfuric acid,
Speaker 1: or by smelting lead and zinc ores at the same time. Now,
Speaker 1: thallium has been used to poison people through their tea
Speaker 1: and other consumables, so this against is why it is
Speaker 1: the poisoner's poison. Uh. This actually happened in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three when Australian Caroline Grills killed three of her family
Speaker 1: members and a family friend by dosing their tea with thallium.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, a seventeen year old Japanese
Speaker 1: girl poisoned her mother's tea and then kept a blog
Speaker 1: about how her condition developed. So she essentially, over the
Speaker 1: days was tracking how the thallium was affecting her mother.
Speaker 1: But it's just that just goes to show. Even in
Speaker 1: two thousand six, people were so hard pressed for some
Speaker 1: sort of angle for their blog. I mean, you had
Speaker 1: to try. She had. She was looking to get those
Speaker 1: CPMs from her Google ad Sense. I guess I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: it's horrible to make jokes about this. I think her
Speaker 1: mother lived, so luckily it turned out okay. Thallium was
Speaker 1: reportedly plotted actually as a means to also kill Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela when he was in prison, and then in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, Russian soldiers accidentally mixed thallium together with their tobacco.
Speaker 1: They were like handmaking tobacco cigarettes. They actually mix it
Speaker 1: together and then we're treated for poisoning after they smoked it,
Speaker 1: and then they used it as a talcum powder for
Speaker 1: their feet as well. Yeah, yeah, So this just goes
Speaker 1: to show you be careful about what you put in
Speaker 1: your cigarettes, I guess, yeah, or what you put on
Speaker 1: your feet. Investigators from the World Health Organization also say
Speaker 1: that thallium was something that Saddam Hussein used to kill
Speaker 1: hundreds of dissidents. So this stuff has a long history.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a nasty bit of business. Fortunately it
Speaker 1: can be treated. It's treated with something called Prussian blue,
Speaker 1: and this is a blue chemical pigment uh in a
Speaker 1: combination of potassium chloride. It's actually thought that Prussian blue
Speaker 1: binds with thallium when it's inside our intestinal tracks, and
Speaker 1: this is more effectively than something that's called activated charcoal,
Speaker 1: which is often used to help the spell these poisons.
Speaker 1: So it binds better with it that it keeps it
Speaker 1: from being absorbed and then passed through the rest of
Speaker 1: your body. Activated charcoal, though, is recommended in the absence
Speaker 1: of Prussian blue. So like most people's first aid kits
Speaker 1: don't have Prussian blue in it, right, But but you
Speaker 1: might have these charcoal capsules now you can buy charcoal
Speaker 1: capsules that your local health store. Yeah, so thallium's derivatives,
Speaker 1: they're actually really common in just everyday items that we use,
Speaker 1: like medical scanners, electronic components, optical lenses, imitation jewelry, thermometers.
Speaker 1: And here's a weird one. Green colored fireworks specifically have
Speaker 1: thallium in them. Well, this is this makes the Russian
Speaker 1: account make more sense because I mean, do accidentally get
Speaker 1: it into your cigarettes. It has to be around, you know,
Speaker 1: around in some quantity. Maybe they were grinding up imitation
Speaker 1: jewelry and smoking. I hope they weren't smoking green fireworks,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm not quite sure. It sounded to me
Speaker 1: like it was something that was like available on whatever
Speaker 1: base they were stationed at, and I think they thought
Speaker 1: it was just something that would help bind their tobacco together.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing. Thallium, because it emits gamma rays,
Speaker 1: it can actually help doctors tell whether a heart is
Speaker 1: receiving enough blood and oxygen. So you essentially injected into
Speaker 1: a patient and you can you know, use a combination
Speaker 1: of gamma rays and thallium to see what's going on
Speaker 1: with a patient's heart. And medically it used to be
Speaker 1: used to treat ring worm and other skin infections, but
Speaker 1: now we consider it way too toxic to chance that.
Speaker 1: So there's other better ways to treat your ring worm
Speaker 1: now than than thallium poisoning. So that's thallium. That is
Speaker 1: one of just a few heavy metals that can be
Speaker 1: used to poison a human being. Yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: we we covered six really good ones here. It is
Speaker 1: one of those situations where we could always come back
Speaker 1: and cover six more at some point. Yeah, if those
Speaker 1: of you out there found this interesting you want us
Speaker 1: to do more, please let us know. You can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. We also have our new Facebook discussion module
Speaker 1: where we have sort of more uh I guess, smaller
Speaker 1: intimate conversations about topics from the podcast. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: good place for longer form discussion as well. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: if you want to confess to any poisonings that you've committed,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go on there and let us know.
Speaker 1: And rather than letting a million of our Facebook page
Speaker 1: followers know, you'll probably be letting like two hundred Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh um, uh, take it with a pinch of salt
Speaker 1: like a grain of salt. I meant to uh to
Speaker 1: expand on that, so real quick before we close out
Speaker 1: um plenty of the elder wrote about this. He used
Speaker 1: to he used the term grain taking with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt in the natural history, because he was quite
Speaker 1: obsessed with antidotes for poisons as well as the poisons themselves.
Speaker 1: And he shared the following. After the defeat of that
Speaker 1: mighty monarch, Maritha dots Neis, Pompeius found in his private
Speaker 1: cabinet a recipe for an anecdote in his own handwriting,
Speaker 1: it was to the following effect. Take two dried walnuts,
Speaker 1: two figs and twenty leaves of rue, pound them all
Speaker 1: together with the addition of a grain of salt. If
Speaker 1: a type person takes this mixture fasting, he will be
Speaker 1: proof against all poisons for that day. So take that
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. But this is one of
Speaker 1: this is often attributed as being where we get that
Speaker 1: for etymological origin of the grain of salt. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know the grain of salt would help you
Speaker 1: against thalium poison. I don't do not think it would. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well, hey, once again there go six deadly poisons,
Speaker 1: and if you have you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with this directly, you can send your least poisonous comments
Speaker 1: to us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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