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