0:00

The earth pours forth a profusion

0:02

of medicinal plants, and is always

0:04

producing something for the use of man. We

0:07

may even suppose that it is out

0:09

of compassion to us, that she has

0:11

ordained certain substances to

0:14

be poisonous, in order that, when

0:16

we are weary of life hunger,

0:19

a mode of death that most foreign

0:21

to the kind disposition of the earth,

0:24

might not consume us by a slow decay.

0:27

That precipices might not laceerate

0:29

our mangled bodies, that the unseemly

0:32

punishment of the halter may

0:34

not torture us by stopping

0:37

the breath of one who seeks his own

0:39

destruction, or that we may

0:41

not seek our death in the ocean and

0:43

become food for our graves, or

0:45

that our bodies may not be gashed

0:48

by steel. On this account,

0:51

it is that nature has produced a substance

0:53

which is very easily taken, and

0:55

by which life is extinguished,

0:58

the body remaining undefied child

1:00

and retaining all its blood, and only

1:02

causing a degree of thirst. And

1:05

when it is destroyed by this means,

1:07

neither bird nor beast will touch the

1:09

body. But he who has perished

1:12

by his own hands, he is reserved

1:14

for the earth Welcome

1:20

to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how

1:22

Stuff Works dot com.

1:30

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

1:32

is Robert Lamb and I'm Pliny the Elder.

1:35

Actually I'm Christian Seger. Today's

1:37

episode was brought to you by a quote by

1:39

a good old Pliny. Oh yes, yes, that's

1:41

from the Natural History, one of our favorite

1:45

Roman historians. As always, you can't

1:47

take everything that Pliny

1:50

says um as the as

1:52

the complete truth. I always take it with a certain

1:54

grain of salt. But he's he he

1:57

when we'll get back to the grain of salt thing

2:00

at the end, uh, because that actually

2:02

comes from the riding of Plenty. But

2:04

he always has such interesting inside

2:07

and commentary on the natural world, and

2:10

in this case he's talking about the wonders

2:12

of poison. Yeah, it's a nice little

2:15

poetic riff on basically

2:17

the idea that our bodies are

2:19

essentially like chemical machines,

2:22

right, and that like think of it like as

2:24

in comparison to a car, Like instead

2:26

of putting gasoline in a car, if you filled

2:29

it up with milk, that's gonna really mess

2:31

with the system, right, and the

2:34

exactly uh, And so

2:37

basically we're focusing on how

2:39

there are these things in the natural world that if you just

2:42

put them into our system, boy does

2:44

it really mess things up. And for the longest time

2:46

we didn't really understand why. Right, there was all

2:48

this mythology around the reasons

2:51

why we have a whole episode that's

2:53

on wolf Spain or actually

2:55

aconite, uh, and the

2:58

surrounding myths around that and the science of

3:00

how that poisons the human body. But we

3:02

thought, you know what, it's let's pull

3:04

out the handbook. Let's look at some of the

3:06

otter poisons that are out there. Uh,

3:09

specifically natural ones were not. I don't

3:11

think we have any synthetic ones in here. No, I

3:13

think all of these tie into a natural source.

3:15

And and that's really that's really the fascinating

3:17

thing, right, is that these are all

3:19

generally cases. Generally speaking, these are cases

3:22

where the natural world, specifically

3:24

that the world of of plants has

3:26

produced various chemical weapons for their

3:29

defense, and humans are

3:31

able to manipulate those chemical weapons

3:33

to our advantage. And I mean we do that with things

3:35

that aren't even poisons. We do that with spices.

3:38

But in this case, we're gonna be looking at at

3:41

at particular substances that

3:43

that have been used and are used

3:45

as deadly poisons, yet

3:48

not all of these would necessarily be

3:50

enough to fill up a whole episode. And also

3:53

if we were just going to do an episode on poisons

3:55

in general, that would fill up probably the whole

3:57

podcast. So we decided, let's

3:59

boil it down each of us take three

4:01

that we're really interested in talking about,

4:04

do the research, and then bring it to you all.

4:07

Uh. And I had to be honest. I

4:09

mean, we've been talking about doing something like this for a while,

4:11

but good Old Game of Thrones has definitely

4:14

brought this to the forefront of

4:16

my mind because poisons are so

4:18

common on that show. Uh, if

4:21

you're a fan, I'm going to refrain from or if

4:23

you're not a fan, rather, I'm gonna refrain

4:25

from mentioning any specifics. But George R. Martin

4:28

has just created this entire world of

4:30

fictional poisons. He's got the Tears

4:32

of is It Lists, Tears of Lists,

4:35

then there's the Strangler and the Long Farewell.

4:37

But then he actually uses some real ones

4:40

as well. In fact, Wolf Spaane isn't in

4:42

the show has mentioned before. Uh,

4:44

he he distorts what their actual effects are.

4:47

But we any of the milk of a poppy as

4:49

well, which is a medicinal substance

4:51

but can be overdosed on with

4:54

fairly easily. Yeah, exactly, And so

4:56

it's like this thing that I don't know. In present

4:58

day, we don't usually think about poison

5:01

all that much because it's not common,

5:04

even though it could be right, especially

5:06

like when we go through these examples today, you realize

5:09

like, oh wow, it's actually not that hard to get ahold

5:11

of something that could absolutely kill my

5:13

neighbor drop dead if I put it in their Pooh.

5:15

Yeah, I mean, and if you have if you have a child,

5:17

or even have have pets though, you mean you're aware

5:20

that there are certain certain substances

5:22

you do not want them to get their their hands

5:25

or their paws upon. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,

5:27

So we decided to hit our favorites.

5:30

Uh, and Robert, you're going to start us off today.

5:32

This one sounds interesting, the Devil's Foot.

5:35

Yes, so we're

5:37

talking about you know, where do we see our poisons

5:40

use fictionally? Game of Thrones to

5:42

be sure, but so many different

5:44

murder mysteries in fiction

5:46

revolve around a poison because it's always a

5:48

mysterious death has occurred, and we have

5:50

to connect the dots. It's like the classic answer

5:53

to a locked room mystery is poison.

5:55

Yeah, so uh, indeed, uh,

5:58

I'm gonna talk a little bit about a fictional

6:01

poison from the Tales of Sherlock

6:03

Holmes. Uh, Sir Rotha Conan Doyle's

6:05

tales that actually has a

6:08

real world counterpart. Uh,

6:10

it was actually inspired by a

6:12

particular poison. So some

6:14

of my favorite Sherlock Holmes tales are the

6:16

ones that did buck the more famous

6:19

cliches. They're the ones where say Holmes

6:21

lets the killer go free, or the

6:23

ones where the narrative seems to tread

6:26

dangerously close to supernatural

6:28

waters. And so the

6:31

perfect fit for both of these categories is

6:33

nineteen tens The Adventure of the

6:36

Devil's Foot, And it's pretty much my go to

6:38

tail. And I'm particularly fond of the

6:40

nineteen eight Granada adaptation

6:42

that started to uh, the wonderful Jeremy

6:45

Brett as homes. Are these the ones that they used

6:47

to play on PBS. Yeah,

6:49

and this is this is a wonderful episode because

6:51

it really gets into that kind of

6:54

supernatural possibly supernatural

6:56

territory and and even some

6:58

kind of psychedelic scenes. H I

7:00

agree with you. I think like some of the best home

7:03

stuff is where you're treading

7:05

so close to something that's like a paranormal

7:07

phenomenon, but then there's like an actual explanation

7:10

for it. In fact, I know

7:12

a lot of people don't love this movie, but young

7:14

Sherlock Holmes, that was one of the things that always

7:16

attracted me to it as a kid was

7:19

that it was like teetering on the brink of

7:21

being supernatural. Oh yeah, that that's

7:23

one that I only have a vague memory of from

7:25

when I was a kid. But I actually thought it was

7:28

full on supernatural woul until later that I realized

7:30

that they were. They had an hallucination

7:32

plot. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah.

7:34

So I am going to spoil the

7:37

Adventure of the Devil's Foot for you. Spoilers

7:40

for a one seven year old story.

7:43

Yeah. And and if you are trying to remain spoiler

7:45

free on this, if you're like making your way through the Granada

7:47

television series or you're reading the

7:49

books, then I don't know. I guess skip forward like fifteen

7:52

minutes, ten fifteen minutes and you can move on to

7:54

the next one. Uh. But here's

7:56

here's how it goes down. The case concerns a famed

7:59

explorer named Dr Leon

8:01

Sterndale and the feuding

8:04

Trey Ginnis family. So Holmes

8:06

and Watson there on a seaside holiday

8:09

for health reasons. Um,

8:11

you know, as you do, because Holmes has been

8:13

taking too many drugs again. He needs to

8:15

clean him out. Yeah, it is, well in the

8:17

TV series it is, so it's

8:20

I don't think this is president in the in the

8:22

actual written tale, but Jeremy

8:24

Brad especially wanted Holmes to kick

8:26

his m his addiction, so

8:29

he consisted that this would be a

8:31

good episode for him to kick his cocaine

8:34

and morphine. Okay, Okay, I was

8:36

just joking. I had. Yeah, well

8:38

that's where I go to seaside towns for so.

8:41

So they're in the midst of this and Holmes

8:43

is like, you know, he's taken his syringe and

8:45

buried it in the sand. Uh.

8:47

And then suddenly a local man, Mr. Mortimer

8:50

True Guinness, arrives with a vicar

8:52

to report a sudden case of

8:54

insanity. So Trey Guinness's

8:57

two brothers have

9:00

suddenly gone mad and that the sister

9:02

is dead. They find they find

9:04

the two brothers disturbingly just stark

9:06

raving mad in their kitchen and the

9:08

sister Brenda, sets opposite the window

9:11

and she's just completely dead. So

9:13

Sherlock investigates, and the early suspicion

9:16

is that something terrifying appeared at the window

9:18

and he killed her with frightened just drove them

9:21

mad. So this, you know, just kind of potentially

9:23

supernatural encounter, like what was this being

9:26

that appeared at the window. But

9:28

he starts looking at the evidence, and the ground outside

9:30

the window is not disturbed.

9:33

The mystery remains, but Holmes

9:35

is is various. You know, he's

9:37

gonna side on the non supernatural explanation.

9:40

But then Mortemurtregennis winds up dead

9:43

as well, and there's this lamp

9:45

burning beside him on the table.

9:47

Now Here in the lamp home, Holmes

9:50

finds some unburnt powder,

9:52

so he test this out on himself. He burns

9:55

it inhales the smoke and he nearly succumbs

9:57

to madness and death as well. And there's just fab

10:00

the sequence in the TV show where he has these psychedelic

10:02

visions of death. And

10:04

then we we finally learn through

10:07

his investigation that what happened

10:09

is that Mortimer stole a sample of a

10:11

deadly African poison from

10:13

the local home of the explorer Dr

10:15

Leon Sterndale. Now Sterndale

10:18

had just left for a lengthy journey

10:20

overseas. So more Mortimer

10:23

thought that he was going to be out of the picture, you know, for

10:25

virtually forever, because it was this is going to consume

10:27

the rest of his life. But he

10:30

had He ended up receiving word

10:32

of the sisters death, of Brenda's

10:35

death, and Brenda he had loved her for years,

10:37

but he was unable to marry her, so he had a deep

10:39

connection to her. So he returns

10:42

and he kills mortimurtre Guinnis with the same

10:44

deadly poison that was used on

10:46

his beloved. And the poison is

10:48

that we're told is radics pettus dialbolie

10:51

the Devil's foot route. Okay, so

10:54

why do they give an explanation as to why it's

10:56

called that doesn't look like a little like demon

10:58

foot, like a red foot with some tonails.

11:01

Uh kind of, I mean sort of. It

11:03

looks like a like a root and has devilish

11:05

effects and uh. And I also remember

11:07

in the Granada series, anytime they introduce

11:09

it, they have kind of lists up, you know, African

11:12

drumbeat in the background, which is really cool. Oh

11:14

yeah, I'm recalling cheese.

11:17

Do you remember we talked about this in the Wolf Spane

11:19

episode I think, or maybe it was the Mushrooms episode.

11:21

I went to the dog park one time and there was

11:24

this weird fungus growing in the dog park. I

11:26

took a picture of it and put it on the Stuff to Blow

11:28

your Mind Facebook page, and immediately

11:30

members of our audience were like, oh, that is

11:33

such and such fungus, and it

11:35

was like the devil's horn, I believe the

11:38

term for it. So that's why I'm sort of imagining

11:40

this this demon looking mushroom.

11:43

I guess yeah, I mean certainly

11:45

is an authentic sounding title. It

11:47

is a fictitious poison. However,

11:50

there is a grounding and actual botany, so

11:52

this was This is really cool to learn. I was not familiar

11:55

with this story until until recently when I started

11:57

looking into it. So, according to two

12:00

different sources, I looked at Here Books Health, the book's

12:02

Health and History blog of the New York Academy of Medicine,

12:05

and as well as an article in the Guardian. According

12:07

to them, Holmes creator Sir Arthur Cornan

12:09

Doyle did some self experimentation

12:12

of his own as a third year medical student

12:15

at the University of Edinburgh with a

12:17

substance known as gil simium,

12:20

and he wrote about this in an in the in

12:22

an eighteen seventy nine issue

12:24

of the British Medical Journal. This

12:26

is gonna turn out to be a common theme I think today

12:29

as people just trying stuff out on themselves.

12:31

Well, it kind of gets back to our Wolf Spain episode where

12:33

we talked about the mythical origins

12:36

and Chinese traditional medicine, that you had

12:38

this one godlike being

12:40

that kind of went around trying these things and determining

12:42

what was poised because essentially that

12:45

sort of trial and error and then you know

12:47

the knowledge you passed on. That's that's

12:49

where we learned that there are certain things

12:51

you eat and certain ones you don't, and

12:53

there's this gray area of stuff that you

12:55

know exactly how much to apply and win.

12:57

I think I'm glad that we're at a point in history, or

13:00

I don't. I'm not in a situation where I'm like, I

13:02

guess I should just try that, try,

13:05

try a small amount of it and see what happens. Yeah,

13:07

I mean, especially with with the gil simium

13:09

So there are three varieties of this Two

13:12

are found in Central America, in one in

13:14

southern China. It's a woody

13:16

vine with bright yellow flowers. And the Asian

13:19

variety, gil Simium elegans,

13:22

is the most deadly of the three, and

13:24

it's also known as heartbreak grass.

13:27

So gil Simium was actually once used

13:30

to treat migraines, but that

13:32

but the key side effect was loss of muscle

13:34

control. So this

13:36

is also a common theme, which is that, like, the

13:39

reason why we know about a lot of this stuff is because we

13:41

used it to treat various ailments.

13:44

Yeah right, but that too much of it,

13:46

too much, many things, bad thing. Yeah yeah, too much

13:49

of something from your spice rack will will

13:51

give you dire consequences

13:53

in some cases. So, prior

13:57

to writing this paper and conducting the

13:59

self experiment, uh Doyle had

14:01

taken a tincture of this stuff

14:03

to treat nerve pain. But for the experiment

14:06

he took nine million leaders and he reported

14:08

quote severe frontal headache with diarrhea

14:11

and general lassitude. Okay,

14:13

then he lassitude mean, I'm not familiar

14:16

with that, that loose bowell syndrome.

14:19

Well, you know, he's just kind of loose

14:22

in the seat. I guess you would say, okay,

14:24

alright. So then he up the dosage to

14:27

twelve million leaders and at this point quote

14:29

that diarrhea was so persistent and

14:32

prostrating that I must stop.

14:34

At twelve million leaders. I feel great depression

14:37

and a severe frontal headache. The pulse

14:39

was still normal, but weak. It's too bad

14:41

he didn't write this into the Sherlock Holmes

14:44

story. It's just like this story about these

14:46

big these detectives having horrible

14:48

diarrhea and headaches. Yeah, death

14:52

death by or with diarrhea um

14:54

would have made it more horrific in some ways, but

14:56

he decided to sort of you know, weird fiction.

14:59

I think I think made a classier so

15:02

uh you know. The basic just

15:04

here, though, is that s arthocon

15:06

and Doyle was something of a poison enthusiast

15:09

and he was a risk taker, so he conducted

15:11

this experiment on himself. We

15:13

we know now with the additional research

15:16

into the matter, that an overdose of this stuff would

15:19

result in dizziness, nausea, blurred

15:21

vision, and convulsions, and higher doses

15:23

could result in paralysis of the spinal

15:25

cord and this would lead to a near total loss

15:28

of muscular power and eventually asphyxia.

15:32

Not a good way to go. Yeah, it's not quite the madness

15:34

and death of the Devil's Foot, but

15:37

it's pretty bad. So. Gil Simium

15:39

has been used as an analgesic and various

15:41

homeopathic products, but the toxicity

15:44

limits its usefulness. At the dawn of the twentieth

15:46

century, was still being used in asthma and

15:48

respiratory remedies, and it also factors

15:51

into traditional Chinese medicine where it's used

15:53

to treat pain. But it has

15:55

allegedly been used as a deadly

15:57

poison. Uh. And this is

16:00

this is where we end up with a couple of very recent

16:02

cases of alleges to gyl simium

16:04

poisoning, and they both took place in two thousand

16:07

twelve. So, according to The Guardian, in

16:09

two thousand twelve, the death of Chinese

16:11

forestry tycoon Long Leon

16:14

was linked to a quote poison

16:17

cat stew containing

16:20

gil simium. Is

16:23

this a stew made of cat or a stew

16:26

forecats, well, in this case made

16:28

with cat and gil simium.

16:30

Yeah, I mean you occasionally find, you

16:33

know, Chinese dishes that still have these

16:36

these meats with Yeah, I'm aware from the time

16:38

that I spent in Beijing. I remember

16:41

that that kind of stuff being on the menu occasionally,

16:43

Okay, wanting to make sure for our audience.

16:45

So he definitely ordered it with the

16:47

cat. But if there is gil simium in it, he

16:50

definitely did not order that part. Didn't That

16:52

was some nefarious spice,

16:54

right. So another case, and

16:56

this one again is uh is alleged

16:59

the two thousand twelve death of Russian businessman

17:01

and whistleblower Alexander. This

17:05

seems to be like a common at

17:08

least like in terms of like news media where

17:10

we're hearing about poisoning, the most is Russian

17:13

whistle blowers. Yeah,

17:15

I mean probably we could do we could do a whole episode

17:17

just on espionage related poisoning. Yeah.

17:19

In fact, like as I was looking up like different

17:22

poisons to hit for this episode, so

17:24

many of the examples kept coming up. It was like, oh,

17:26

in the last ten years, you know, this

17:28

Russian former diplomat was poison this journalist

17:31

was poison Jadiyata. Now and in

17:33

this case, as with some of these these others

17:35

you're alluding to, it's not certain.

17:39

Uh. The gall simium link

17:41

it comes via a life insurance company

17:44

ordered test two years after his death,

17:47

and based on that it has been suggested that he was assassinated

17:49

by Russian operatives. Wow. So,

17:53

so I think that's a fabulous poison

17:55

to kick off here, because we go from the fictional realm

17:57

to uh, you know, this tale of an author testing

18:00

a real poison out on himself, and then to uh,

18:03

you know, recent alleged poisonings

18:06

in China and Russia. All right, well, I will

18:08

add that index card to my

18:10

recipe book. Uh and

18:13

I will I will counter that with

18:15

one to you. Have you ever heard of Spanish

18:17

fly before? This is the kind

18:19

of thing fourteen year old boys ask each other, as

18:22

people who've listened to the show for a while. No,

18:24

I actually grew up in Singapore, and

18:28

you could kind of buy substances

18:30

over there that you wouldn't necessarily be able

18:32

to find in like American malls.

18:35

Right, And there were constantly

18:37

students at my school talking about how they had

18:39

purchased Spanish fly while they were on a trip

18:41

to Malaysia or Indonesia or something

18:44

like that. They'd like pull like a weird

18:46

little vial out and it would just be some powder.

18:49

And you know, fourteen

18:51

year old boys, what's what's Spanish

18:53

fly? Oh, it's this magic love potion

18:56

and all you have to do is like, uh,

18:58

put it on somebody or make sure that they eat

19:00

it and they fall in love with you. That

19:03

was the urban myth of this when I was in

19:05

high school. Right Ironically, there's

19:07

actually a bit of stand

19:09

up from Bill Cosby from his early

19:12

years about childhood tales

19:14

of of Spanish Fly and how wonderful

19:17

it was supposed to be. So I'll just I'll just leave

19:19

that there for everyone to consider. It

19:21

is it's like a really weird thing, Like when I

19:23

think back on it, that like we would

19:25

sit around and kind of talk about this and

19:27

obviously there's no scientific marrit behind

19:30

that, as I will get into, but talk

19:32

about it as like, oh, this that's a really intriguing

19:35

thing about the world that I didn't realize that there's

19:37

a substance that just makes somebody fall in love

19:39

with you, right like like, but

19:42

in it's a wonderful way, I guess to rebrand a

19:45

poison for sexual assault. Well that's exactly

19:47

it, right, Like I look back on that and I'm like, these

19:49

these innocent boys around like the lunch

19:52

table in the cafeteria are talking about this

19:54

and you don't really realize. Then you extrapolated

19:56

it out to Bill Cosby levels and you realize,

19:59

like, oh my god, this is horrible. You know. Now,

20:02

Spanish fly is a real thing, but it's

20:04

not what I was told when I was fourteen

20:07

living in Singapore. Actually,

20:09

what it is is something called can theridin

20:12

and cam theradin is a substance that is

20:14

derived from a subgroup of blister

20:16

beetles and it can cause the skin

20:19

to blister. This is where these bugs get their name.

20:21

Specifically, the blister beetle is

20:23

known as the Spanish fly or

20:26

the lighta Vesicatoria,

20:29

and it's common to a South European

20:31

species from which can't theorides

20:34

is extracted and commercially prepared

20:37

by crushing the wing covers on the adults.

20:40

Now there's reportedly Spanish fly that is found

20:42

in northern Mediterranean regions,

20:45

not just in Spain. Basically,

20:48

these bugs secrete cantoried

20:50

and from their mouths and there's

20:53

in their joints. They

20:56

have this milky substance that seeps

20:58

out. It sounds really gross, but

21:00

the male beetle uses this as a

21:02

defense mechanism. And then here

21:05

here's an interesting point. That leads to the myth

21:08

the male gives the female

21:10

this substance as a copulatory

21:13

gift before they mate, so

21:15

that might be like the origin of this whole

21:17

thing. But it's actually quite

21:20

poisonous. But despite

21:22

how poisonous it is, it's used as

21:24

a skin irritant and a diuretic,

21:27

and yes, as an aphrodisiac

21:29

in some cultures. The lethal

21:32

dosage for an adult human

21:34

of Spanish fly is about ten milligrams,

21:37

and in fact, one Jamma Dermatology

21:40

article reviewed for this episode, it

21:43

argued that cantherdin should

21:45

be re added to the medications

21:47

that doctors currently use in their office.

21:50

Basically, it's used they apply it

21:52

topically to treat warts or

21:55

something like molluscumb skin infections.

21:58

In nineteen sixty two, however, here in the

22:00

United States, it lost its FDA

22:03

approval because manufacturers

22:05

didn't submit their data

22:07

about its efficacy, and

22:09

it's expected to soon be

22:11

back on what is called the f d

22:14

a's Bulk Substances List,

22:16

which permits physicians to use

22:18

it in the office on individual patients.

22:21

So presumably, if you came in you had

22:23

a bad case, awards or something on your hand,

22:25

your doctor would say well, you know it, I'll pull

22:27

some of this Kent therap in out of the old cabinet

22:29

here, We'll put it on there. It'll blister away these

22:32

warts and then your skin will be free

22:34

of this. Uh. The JAMMA article

22:36

actually also says that they could not find

22:38

any reports of Kent

22:40

therapy and poisoning being caused by

22:43

the application from a physician. Okay,

22:45

So while this is really poisonous

22:47

and physicians use it, it's also

22:50

you know, traditionally being used safely

22:52

by physicians now,

22:55

very much like the poison that you introduced us to.

22:57

It used to be used topically in Asian

23:00

medicine, and they would use it to treat piles ulcers,

23:02

venomous worms, and tuberculosis.

23:05

Orally it was used to treat abdominal

23:08

masses, rabies, and cancer.

23:10

Huh. Yeah. It's

23:13

also worth noting that this is

23:16

very poisonous to horses as

23:18

well as humans. So in fact, fields

23:20

that are near horses are usually

23:22

have to be surveyed to make sure that none of these

23:24

beetles are in them, because if they get a

23:27

dose of these, it can kill a horse. But

23:29

where's this reputation of this aphrodisiac

23:32

come from? Where did this? How did

23:34

this myth get to my cafeteria table

23:37

in school? It's still

23:39

a mystery actually. Now, obviously

23:41

I presented you with the you know, idea

23:44

that because this male beetle gives

23:46

it to the female beetle, maybe there's something to that.

23:48

That's also thought to be because it

23:50

causes a dilation of blood

23:53

vessels, which allows an increased

23:55

blood flow, and that would

23:57

be useful for one human

23:59

organ through what's known

24:02

as priapism. This is essentially

24:04

when the penis remains erect,

24:06

non sexually for hours without

24:08

stimulation. This is a word that I

24:11

learned for this episode. Yeah, I mean you

24:13

occasionally see this, Uh, this will come up

24:15

in terms of say, a bicycle accident

24:17

could Yeah, it's

24:19

not it's not a pleasant experience.

24:22

That's like the medical term for something. Yeah,

24:24

like if you come into an emergency room and that

24:26

is going on, that's what they should refer

24:29

to it as. So it's purported

24:31

that Henry the Fourth and the Marquis

24:33

Dessade both used Spanish

24:35

fly. In fact, it said that the

24:37

Marquis Desade poisoned prostitutes

24:40

with candles that contained it

24:43

in order to increase their sexual

24:45

response. So based on everything

24:48

that I've read of and by the Marquis assad

24:50

that sounds right on point,

24:53

but also sounds awful, right. So

24:56

the way that this essentially works, the intense

24:58

irritation and blistering it causes

25:00

is incredibly unpleasant, and when

25:02

you ingest it, that same blistering

25:04

effect happens in the intestinal

25:07

track. This causes severe hemorrhaging.

25:09

It leads to the vomiting of blood, darkened

25:12

urine, and bloody stool. There is

25:14

also a burning of the mouth, difficulty

25:16

swallowing, nausea, seizures,

25:18

and cardiac abnormalities. There

25:21

is no antidote to this, and

25:23

death is painful and rapid. Do

25:26

you Essentially it sounds like you're putting like battery acid

25:28

in your throat. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing sexy about

25:30

this at all, no camp therodin

25:32

has no odor and it's colorless.

25:35

So this is like the perfect kind of thing to use

25:37

as a poison, right. It also with stains

25:39

degradation by heat or drying, so

25:42

it's difficult to remove it, Like if you spilt

25:44

it on something, it's not that easy to get

25:46

rid of. Now, there's this story about

25:48

a guy named Arthur Ford and

25:51

he worked at a chemical manufacturer

25:53

in London, and he really

25:55

wanted to get one of his employees to

25:57

fall in love with him. He wanted to leave his life,

26:00

and I think that this was like an administrative assistant

26:03

who worked for him or something like that. So

26:05

he took can' theradin from the

26:07

chemical manufacturer's storage

26:09

area and he spiked coconut

26:12

ice with it, and then he gave

26:14

it to all his office employees. So

26:16

this is this is where like these urban legends

26:18

come from and then go horribly awry.

26:21

Two women died, including the one he was

26:23

trying to get to fall in love with him, and he himself

26:26

was hospitalized but then recovered.

26:28

When they investigated this, they found up to ten

26:31

times the lethal dose of km'

26:33

theradin in the victims. Guess

26:36

what punishment he got for this? Oh,

26:38

I mean, I should hope they just really put him away for

26:41

two murders would be a horrible poison

26:43

five years, you got five years.

26:46

It's actually thought by medical researchers

26:49

that cam therapin poisoning may

26:51

actually be a more common

26:53

cause of morbidity

26:55

than is generally recognized, So we

26:58

basically aren't equipped to recognize

27:00

this in all situations. So it's possible, like

27:03

maybe some of these uh vials

27:06

of supposed Spanish fly that people

27:08

are buying actually have some kan

27:10

theratin in them and could least lead

27:12

to poisoning events. Okay, so here's

27:14

another story based around this. In nineteen

27:17

two, a doctor in the United Kingdom

27:19

tried using kantheratin on

27:22

children and he wanted to use

27:24

it to test against rheumatic

27:26

fever to see what would happen.

27:29

It had previously been thought to work

27:31

as a treatment for rheumatic fever,

27:34

especially when like as a symptom

27:36

of that the liquid would build up around

27:38

a human heart. So this doctor he

27:41

would use the substance to blister

27:43

the skin on these children's torsos,

27:45

and then he would snip away this blistered

27:48

skin, uh and he dressed

27:50

the wound and he would note, oh, well, the

27:52

wound would heal in a few days. He

27:54

tested around forty children

27:56

in this experiment without their consent

27:59

or knowledge. So like he would just I

28:01

guess say like, okay, well we're gonna try this medicine

28:03

now, and it would burn them, cause

28:06

these horrible blisters, and he would cut the

28:08

blisters off, and essentially

28:10

that was as far as he got with his research. Yeah,

28:14

so okay, As I said before, there's

28:16

no antidote for this. It can be

28:18

treated topically with acetone

28:21

ether, fatty soap, or alcohol,

28:24

and essentially these help dissolve

28:26

and dilute it. So you know, you spill some of

28:28

this stuff on you before it starts blistering

28:30

you. You you put that on. Hopefully it helps dissolve

28:32

it. But if you ingest it, there's

28:35

only support measures available. So

28:38

look, hopefully none of you out there are

28:40

rushing out to go buy this stuff. It is

28:42

an entire urban myth. I you

28:44

know, I'm glad I never got my hands

28:47

on any of this stuff. I never heard of any poisoning

28:49

incidents in my school and

28:51

this was going on. I think mainly like what

28:53

these guys were selling down at the market was probably

28:56

just like they would literally take like a household

28:58

fly, grind it up into dust and sell it to some

29:00

duction for five bucks. You know, Um,

29:03

they would dry it out first, I would assume. But

29:07

if there's any point where, for whatever

29:09

reason, you think that like there's a danger that

29:11

either you or somebody around you has ingested

29:14

this, you're supposed to swallow generous

29:17

amounts of water and avoid

29:19

fatty foods like milk, And the reason why

29:21

is because fatty foods will increase

29:24

the absorption of the cantheritin in

29:26

your system. You also don't want to

29:28

induce vomiting. So some people think like,

29:30

well, oh, you swallowed this, just vomited

29:32

back. But what happens if

29:35

you do that is it will further

29:37

damage the esophagus on its way out, So

29:39

it goes down, it causes this blistering

29:41

effect, and then if you try to vomit it back out,

29:43

it causes the burning all over

29:46

again. Yeah, this is really

29:48

nasty stuff, and it somehow

29:50

has this reputation as

29:52

like this bizarre

29:55

love drug. Well

29:58

again, we can't. We can't stress strongly

30:00

enough do not obtain Spanish

30:03

fly and certainly do not administer a Spanish

30:05

fly. Yeah. Absolutely an urban

30:07

legend, but it

30:09

seems to be an extremely effective way

30:11

to poison somebody. All Right, we're gonna

30:14

take a quick break and when we come back, we're going

30:16

to explore two more of

30:18

our six deadly poisons. All

30:24

Right, we're back. So you have a word

30:26

written down here and it looks like goo, yes,

30:29

Google, which is in this case,

30:32

it is a a Chinese poison

30:35

of sort of mythic and folkloric

30:37

origin. I like the like, if you

30:39

extrapolate that to our word goo g

30:42

o o, it's kind of like the perfect

30:44

name for a poison, you know, like, yeah,

30:46

oh, would you use just some Google Well,

30:49

you know this, uh, this whole episode

30:51

that I'm going to discuss here reminds me a bit

30:53

of the comic that you turned

30:55

me onto. Orc Stain. Oh. Yeah, there's

30:58

a lot of poisons. Yeah, there's like a whole ride

31:00

that lives in I think they live in the mountains

31:02

or the jungle deep Jungles, and they

31:04

have this fantastic abilities

31:06

with poison. They're able to shoot the

31:09

orc assassins with a poison that makes their head

31:11

explode, that sort of thing. Yeah. If if

31:13

you're unfamiliar with this and you're curious about

31:15

it, it's a comic series by a guy named James

31:17

Stoko, and Orc Stain is

31:20

essentially like a I guess high

31:22

fantasy, but pretty much all the characters

31:24

in it are orcs. Yeah, and it has a very

31:26

almost kind of gonzo style to it that

31:29

reminds me a little bit of I

31:31

mean, it has kind of that sort of heavy metal energy

31:33

to it. It's a little bit a bit of that sort of uh,

31:36

you know, what is a two thousand a d kind

31:38

of sensibility. I think that's the kind of stuff that

31:40

influenced him. Yeah, you know, I should

31:42

mention this to you, but I'll tell our audience

31:45

about it while we're here too. He has since

31:47

gone on to do Godzilla mini

31:49

series that I highly recommend. Imagine that guy

31:51

doing god and then he just

31:54

started doing an Aliens mini

31:56

series. It's called Aliens Dead Orbit and

31:58

man, his take on the Aliens is so bizarre.

32:00

Yeah, I mean he his uh use

32:02

of body are and biology is wonderful,

32:05

So I imagine that is as well. Keep that

32:07

in mind as we roll forward here.

32:09

So I found this, uh, this excellent

32:11

source on Google in

32:13

this article by A Norma Diamond

32:16

that was published in an edition

32:18

of Ethnology. It's

32:20

titled The Meal and Poison

32:22

Interactions on China's Southwest

32:25

Frontier, and it does a fabulous job just

32:27

breaking down this concept of goo. So

32:30

a lot of it concerns folk tales and

32:32

superstitions surrounding poison

32:35

and in the use of these superstitions

32:37

against frontiers people and when

32:40

women in particular, So we're

32:42

talking about Han Chinese

32:44

tales of the male people. The male

32:46

are one of China's fifty five recognized

32:49

ethnic groups, and these this would be mostly

32:51

in the mountains of southern China.

32:54

Now, the frontier, Diamond points out,

32:56

was this was a frightening place for frontiers

32:58

tend to be on the edges of of empire.

33:01

So there was periodic unrest because

33:03

it was a frontier after all, and this was there

33:05

were there's also a place where one encountered

33:07

a different ethnic people with seemingly barbaric

33:10

ways. And finally, she points

33:12

out there were a number of endemic

33:14

diseases such as encephalitis,

33:17

meningitis, dysentery, leprosy.

33:20

So people, you know, would travel out to the frontier

33:22

and they would come back with tales or oh the people

33:24

were hostile and strange and

33:26

they're all these weird diseases. They're

33:28

horrible things happening to people's bodies there,

33:31

and uh and and so you end up with a

33:35

superstitious tradition that

33:37

is very much grounded in um

33:40

xenophobia really and also

33:42

in in in a good bit of misogyny. As

33:44

we'll explore man these poisons

33:47

already, we're just just on our third

33:49

poison, we're already in some really dangerous

33:51

social and cultural cultural territory.

33:54

Yeah, because they would get into this, uh, this line

33:56

of thinking to where the Meal were not only

33:59

a people they used poison, but

34:02

they themselves were poisonous and like they

34:04

had to poison people to keep

34:06

the poison from like eating them up.

34:08

Wow, what a what an odd form of

34:11

demonization. So

34:13

you had two main forms of the Google

34:15

folk tail, and these are from the

34:17

Tang dynasty and this is around six eighteen

34:20

uh CE and onward. Uh.

34:22

The first of these is the SoC idea of

34:25

the five poisonous creatures.

34:27

So in this one, Google was simply

34:29

a quasi magical poison

34:31

that was created by sealing the five

34:34

poisonous creatures a snake, a centipede,

34:36

a toad, a scorpion, and a lizard

34:38

inside of a jar. And you keep

34:40

it this jar in a dark place for

34:42

a year. Sounds reasonable, all right.

34:44

Then you you open up that jar and

34:47

you find that essentially there's

34:49

a battle royale in that jar, but the

34:52

creatures eating each other until there's only one

34:54

creature left. And then if it of

34:56

course dies and withers in

34:58

in the container and So

35:00

the ideas that you open the jar up and

35:02

then you take the contents and you ground

35:05

them down, you make a powder, and this

35:07

is the goo poison that causes sickness

35:09

and death. Holy cow, Yeah that sounds

35:12

vile. Yeah, I'm trying to figure

35:14

out who would come out on top of

35:17

this, uh, five poisonous creatures jar.

35:19

I guess. I mean, my gut instinct is

35:21

to say the scorpion, but uh,

35:24

maybe the snake. I guess the snake if it's

35:26

gonna actually eat everything. Yeah, right,

35:28

but I don't you know, a lot of logistical

35:31

concerns coming. You open it up and there's just this

35:33

happy snake with a full belly. So

35:37

um. So that's one version of it. But then

35:39

there there there are other variants as well.

35:42

There's this idea of the goose spirit. So

35:45

in this variant, you have a woman of

35:47

the male and she takes, she keeps a snake,

35:49

a toad or tortoise, or a bird.

35:52

She gets it in a secret chest or a wall compartment,

35:55

she feeds it. And the idea is

35:57

that if her husband or lover deserts her for another,

35:59

then goose spirit, maintained by this

36:01

practice, goes forth and poison him.

36:04

So it's used to ensure faithfulness

36:06

or to seek revenge. And Diamond

36:08

also explains that there's this idea that

36:11

the use of a goose spirit is away for

36:13

the poisonous figure of the

36:15

male female to purge herself

36:17

of her own inner poison. The woman

36:19

it was said she would she had read, she

36:21

would would have reddened eyes, and she would

36:24

become john too swollen and lose her

36:26

appetite if she didn't use

36:28

her poisonous powers. So if

36:30

she were to use it to blight a tree, then she'd

36:32

be protected for three months. If she used

36:34

it on an ox or a pig, she'd be protected

36:37

for a year, and if she used it on a human being,

36:39

three years. Okay, So this is essentially,

36:42

uh, this section of China's

36:45

version of witchcraft and

36:47

familiars. It's like their cultural

36:50

version of demonizing women. Yeah, it's

36:52

a it's ay. Essentially, we're talking about

36:54

poison themed witches here. Yeah, she's

36:56

okay. Now, if we set

36:58

aside witchcraft offten xenophobia

37:01

and so forth, uh, we still

37:04

do have some accounts that point

37:06

to believable use of poisons by the

37:08

Mayo. So, according according to Diamond,

37:10

we have we have the following candidates

37:12

to consider, because again there are they

37:14

do seem to be accounts of them actually using

37:17

poisons as in their you

37:20

know, in combat, et cetera. So

37:22

arsenic was readily available, and

37:24

this is the so called king of poisons, and

37:26

it's long head of place in traditional Chinese

37:29

medicine, imagining like arsenic in like

37:31

an aluminum can, like beer

37:34

of poisons,

37:36

uh and and poisons. Various poisons were

37:38

used in hunting by the meal. So you

37:40

had the one particularly's

37:42

really interesting, the sap of an

37:45

atterriss toxiccaria, a

37:47

tree that's found in southern yunn

37:51

and in Guangzi. And

37:53

this is uh. This is known as poison

37:55

mother. And what you have here is a brownish

37:58

red dried juice sometimes

38:00

mixed with snake venom. And it was widely

38:02

traded in the area around Nanning

38:05

of where and I've I've been. I've been to Nanning,

38:07

That's one of the places I've visited a few

38:09

years years back. But I did not

38:11

go to the poison You drink any snake, but did

38:13

not drink snake. Um.

38:16

I didn't have any occasion when I lived in China

38:18

to have just any poisons either. But it

38:20

seems like this is one of those things though, right.

38:22

It's like it's really easy from a Western perspective

38:25

to hear this stuff and be like, oh my gosh, like

38:27

there's just poisons all over the place there, but we've

38:29

got our own version. Oh yeah, there are plenty of poisons

38:32

around here. Now. This does remind me of, particularly

38:35

of a Thai tradition of their being like a whiskey

38:37

with us with a poison, like a cobra or poisonous

38:40

snake. Okay, yeah, it's sort of like the idea

38:42

of what is it with tequila and you've

38:44

got the worm? Yeah, and isn't

38:46

there another one? It's not tequila, but there's

38:48

another one with a scorpion. I think you can

38:50

tell. I'm not a drinker, but but it's reminiscent

38:52

of what we're talking about with the with the google here. Yeah,

38:55

yeah, now that anitarrist

38:57

toxicaria. It's also known as the Boys

39:00

an Arrow Tree in China. It's because

39:02

it's saying it's so deadly that they had this saying seven

39:05

up, eight down, nine death. Because

39:08

bear with me here, once you're hit with it, you

39:11

can only take seven steps uphill.

39:13

Eight downhill or nine on even terrain

39:15

before you fall dead. That's

39:18

a great like a movie

39:20

for for like a martial arts movie or

39:22

so yeah like that, or or like a video

39:24

game, or or even like a band themes

39:28

fan indeed, So

39:31

what happens here with with this particular

39:33

poison is that the sap from

39:35

this tree, the poison arrow tree, seems

39:38

to affect the activity of muscle membrane

39:40

and heart muscle contraction. So you end

39:42

up with death by cardiac arrest. So

39:45

Diamond says, quote, a fatal dose

39:48

causes a falling heart rate,

39:50

respiratory difficulties, muscular weakness,

39:52

paralysis, convulsions, and finally death

39:54

within a short period of time. A sub lethal

39:57

dose passes out of the body fairly

39:59

quickly. The victim may experienced

40:01

nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and

40:03

visual disturbances.

40:05

So the problem here is that

40:08

that doesn't match up with some of the descriptions

40:10

of Google, right, Yeah, the symptoms

40:13

are different. Yeah, so other

40:15

things to consider here. The meal can

40:18

obtain the commercial strychnine around the dawn

40:20

of the twentieth century, but before

40:22

that they had access to our old friend

40:25

asinite or wolfs bang oh,

40:27

okay, okay, yeah, And I remember us

40:29

talking about that in that episode two, that

40:31

there was some thought that they were using that

40:33

actually wasn't it on arrowheads?

40:36

Yeah yeah, Uh, So it's possible

40:38

that they were using that for goo. However,

40:41

it was a pretty common aspect of

40:43

traditional medicine at the time and remains

40:46

so. And again the symptoms don't

40:48

necessarily match up with all the tales. It's

40:50

also possible that there was some unknown

40:53

herb that was that factored into these poisonings.

40:56

Uh, you know, something that historians, especially Western

40:58

historians, have missed or I mean, and maybe

41:01

easy even been forgotten, But

41:03

I don't know. It seems it seems more likely that we're

41:06

looking at one of those earlier

41:08

examples, you know, the idea of the

41:10

poison arrow tree coming into play,

41:12

for instance. So I think it's fascinating

41:16

how human beings

41:18

over history take these things as simple

41:21

as like a being or a

41:23

tree or a mushroom, and

41:25

we create these entire systems

41:29

of like morality around

41:31

them, right, like in this instance, like

41:33

this witchcraft idea, right, and then

41:35

in my next example, my next poison

41:38

one, this is like an entire way

41:40

of of judging wrongdoing.

41:42

It's called the ordeal being and

41:45

uh it is known by the Latin

41:48

term phiso stigma venenosum

41:51

sounds very hairy, potter a. It's

41:53

an actual thing. So

41:55

numerous West African tribes

41:58

used they used to depend on

42:00

something that's called the caliber being and

42:02

this was in something called a trial by ordeal

42:05

and it basically it attempted to determine

42:08

people's guilt or innocence

42:10

in an ordeal that they left

42:13

to divine control. And

42:15

so this was subsequently known as the ordeal

42:17

being or also as the lie detector

42:19

being for this reason. Essentially,

42:22

what would happen is the tribes would feed

42:25

numerous poison seeds to the accused

42:28

to determine if they were witches, sound familiar

42:31

murderers, or possessed by evil

42:33

spirits. And if they were quote

42:35

innocent, then God would allow

42:38

them to live and they would vomit the

42:40

beans back up. If not,

42:42

the sentence of death was immediately

42:44

carried out by the beans. So essentially, here's

42:46

this poison being. If it kills you,

42:49

then you deserved it. Uh.

42:51

If it doesn't, then well that's

42:54

God telling us that you're innocent. Basically,

42:57

we have the same scenario as like push

42:59

the witch off a clip for put the witch under the

43:01

water. Yeah, and if she lives, well,

43:03

then I guess God thinks you're okay. Exactly

43:06

Now. The administration of this was known

43:08

locally as chopnut and

43:10

it was discovered by the rest of the world

43:12

when missionaries from Scotland arrived

43:15

in eighteen forty six. Then

43:17

the bean made its way back to

43:19

Scotland, where it was studied. A reverend

43:22

there discovered that the local

43:24

king had actually ordered the destruction

43:27

of the vine that these seeds were

43:29

grown on so that he could maintain

43:31

a monopoly on the administration of

43:33

justice. So he essentially made it

43:36

so that only his area

43:38

could obtain these beans, so everybody

43:41

had to come to him to decide

43:43

whether or not somebody was innocent or guilty based

43:46

on whether they could use the beans or not. You know, this

43:48

is fascinating because it makes me think of Sir

43:50

Arthur Conan Doyle because it's the time

43:52

period, is right, Uh he was he

43:55

And we mentioned that the University of Edinburgh

43:57

and this has an African you

44:00

know, like tribal ritual origin, where

44:02

as the Gylsimium did

44:05

not what the gylsimium was tied to South America

44:07

or China, so I can't help, but wonder I

44:09

mean, he he would have being if he was truly

44:12

a poison nut, probably been aware of this. Yeah,

44:14

well, let's let's learn a little bit more about it and then

44:16

maybe we can we can see if it's connected

44:18

more to that Sherlock Holmes story than the gyl

44:21

simium was. It's also said

44:23

that there was a form of dueling that

44:25

was used with these beans, and apparently

44:27

what they would do is two opponents would divide

44:30

a bean and each of them would eat

44:32

one half of it, and the quantity

44:35

was essentially, you know, the only

44:39

was known it could kill either of the

44:41

adversaries, So even half a bean

44:43

was enough to kill a man. So sometimes

44:45

they would both die, sometimes one of them

44:48

would die, sometimes neither of them would die. But

44:50

more often than not, these beans just

44:52

killed you. So it's like a really high

44:54

stakes drinking gang. Yeah. Yeah,

44:57

So the calibar bean is actually

44:59

the seed of a climbing lugaminous

45:01

plant that's known as phiso Stigma

45:04

venanos um, and it is poisonous

45:06

to human beings when it's chewed. But hold

45:09

on, if the whole being is swallowed

45:11

intact, it might prevent the release

45:13

of its toxins. So this is apparently like the trick

45:16

right like, if you ever find yourself in this situation

45:18

with the ordeal being just don't chew and

45:20

then you've got like a better chance.

45:22

That doesn't mean that you're gonna live through it, but it's

45:25

a it's more likely to release its toxins

45:27

if you chew it up. Interesting. So

45:30

these can be found in the coastal area

45:32

of southeastern Nigeria that's

45:34

known as Calibar, and like I said,

45:36

they were first noticed in eighteen forty six. It

45:39

took actually until eighteen sixty one

45:41

for botanists to name it, and they

45:43

named it for the snooping beak like

45:45

solid appendage that's at the end of the

45:48

stigma on these vines. And

45:50

it isn't until the rainy season there, which

45:52

lasts from June through September, that

45:54

the plant produces it's it's best

45:57

most toxic beans. And

45:59

the first medical student who investigated

46:01

its effects on himself was

46:03

a guy named Robert Christensen,

46:06

and he's the one who actually named it too.

46:08

There's nothing in the external

46:10

aspect of this being whether it's its taste

46:13

or its smell to distinguish it

46:15

from other harmless legume

46:17

seeds. In fact, it's known to

46:20

have been eaten by children accidentally

46:22

and killed them. So this is again

46:24

like seems it's got that, you

46:26

know, qualifications for great poison. Right, it's

46:28

odorless, it's hard to detect. Uh,

46:31

it's we're about to find out like

46:33

how it kills people. It's part of a religious

46:35

right as well. Yeah, So

46:38

the reason why it's poisonous is because

46:40

there there's a presence in it of something

46:42

called phiso stigmine

46:45

alkaloid, and this acts on the

46:47

human nervous system pretty much

46:49

the same way nerve gas does. It

46:51

disrupts communication between

46:53

the nervous system and our organs.

46:56

This subsequently leads to contraction of the

46:58

pupils, profew salivation,

47:00

convulsions, seizures, spontaneous

47:04

urination and defecation, loss

47:06

of control of the respiratory system, and finally

47:09

death bi asphyxiation. This seems to be like

47:11

the common and result of these

47:13

poisons as asphyxiation. It

47:16

also affects the reflex functions

47:18

of our spinal cords, and in fatal cases

47:21

it's going to paralyze the sensory columns

47:24

in your spinal cord as well. Now

47:26

it should be noted that this

47:29

has no action on unbroken

47:31

skin. Right, so if you unlike the

47:33

Spanish fly stuff that I was talking about

47:36

earlier, doesn't cause like a blistering effect

47:38

if you just put one of these on your skin. Okay,

47:40

But ophthalmologists used

47:43

to use small doses of this. They

47:45

would derive phiso stig

47:47

mine out of these beans, and they would

47:49

use it to make patients pupils contract.

47:53

Yeah. So like essentially they would

47:55

really you know, boil this down to its

47:57

essence, use a tiny, tiny amount and then drop

47:59

it into your eyes. Well, just another case.

48:01

I feel like I'm on most of these examples. The you

48:04

know, one one individual's medicine as another's

48:06

poison, depending on the dosage. Yeah.

48:08

Yeah, So in recent years, the chemical

48:11

has actually been applied to helping paralyzed

48:13

men who want children. Now, this is where it gets

48:16

interesting, especially in comparison to the Spanish

48:18

fly we talked about earlier. So,

48:20

because this being affects the

48:22

autonomic nervous system,

48:24

it allows men who are otherwise

48:27

paralyzed to ejaculate

48:29

when they normally can't. So this

48:31

allows them to become fathers. Like normally,

48:34

you know, if they're married, they they're

48:36

you know, concerned like, oh, I'm never going to be able

48:38

to be a father, you know, to my partner's

48:41

child. But with this being if

48:43

it's applied correctly, they can. So

48:46

they see strange derivations

48:49

off of this thing that has this cultural

48:51

history of being used for dueling

48:54

or judging whether somebody is a witch or not. Now

48:57

scientists today are actually conducting

49:00

at ease to see if the alkaloid

49:02

here can aid in reversing things like

49:04

Alzheimer's disease because it

49:06

affects neurotransmitters in the brain.

49:08

And weirdly, it's also an

49:11

effective antidote for another

49:13

poison, and this is like one of the

49:15

more more common poisons, a tropa

49:17

belladonna also known as night shade essence

49:20

of nightshade, So this is actually

49:22

a cure for poisoning by belladonna.

49:25

Finally, it's being studied to see

49:28

if phiso stigmine could

49:30

be used as a way to block nerve

49:32

gas, so like saren. For instance,

49:35

if you're in a situation where you're surrounded

49:37

by saren, if you take this it

49:39

might be able to bind to the same

49:41

kind of enzymes that saren binds

49:44

too, So it's hoped that the right dosage

49:46

will block the worst effects of the saren

49:49

without causing lasting damage to

49:51

the victim. This is just

49:53

fascinating, all these apparent ways that

49:55

you could use this thing that is

49:57

essentially like an evil being. And

50:00

it makes me think of our small Bard episode talking about the importance

50:02

of gene uh and particularly

50:04

seed banks, because any any

50:07

number of these uh, these

50:09

uh, these biological specimens out there,

50:12

uh, they may have hidden properties

50:14

that we haven't quite exploited, you know, oh

50:16

definitely, yeah. I mean you think about

50:18

it like this was didn't even start

50:21

being explored really into like a hundred

50:23

and fifty hundred and seventy years ago

50:25

by Scottish uh missionaries

50:28

essentially, right, So there's like potentially

50:32

decades of research that could go into

50:34

something that's just this ordeal being,

50:36

and we could find all of these medicinal ways

50:38

to use them. All right, Well, on that

50:40

note, let's take one final break and when we come

50:42

back, two more poisons and

50:45

really that should do yet. All

50:50

right, we're back. So if you decided, um,

50:53

how which poison you're gonna use yet by

50:57

myself. Well, hey, man on

50:59

whom I don't know, I guess

51:01

I still want that one plenty was talking about that's

51:04

just gonna be so uh,

51:08

this one, I'm not sure this is the this is

51:10

the one necessarily, but uh, but

51:12

it's one that definitely pops up on

51:14

other TV shows, that being rice and if

51:17

I don't know, if you watched Breaking Bad, but rison

51:20

shows up quite a bit. YEA. So

51:23

ricin is derived from the

51:25

castor being plant rice

51:27

Cinnus communists the same

51:30

the same species that's responsible for all that castor

51:33

oil in our medicine and even our food

51:35

products. You grind the beans

51:37

into oil and then you're left with a mash

51:39

byproduct, and that's where you find

51:41

the toxin. It's not a

51:43

fast acting toxin, so symptoms

51:45

here take between four and twenty four hours

51:48

to set in. But ricin

51:50

is highly lethal to humans. A single milligram

51:53

of the stuff is deadly evenhaled

51:55

or ingested. Now, long

51:57

before Walter White plotted to poison

52:00

you know, half the cast of Breaking Bad with this stuff,

52:02

the U. S. Military actually patented

52:04

a method to purify rice and

52:06

toxin for the coming Great

52:09

War. For the First World War. Really

52:11

yeah, okay, but but here's the thing. How

52:13

do you deploy it on a battlefield. Yeah.

52:15

It's not like you can just mash up a bunch of beans

52:17

and throw them at your enemies. Yeah, you can't. You

52:19

can't have like a you know, a secret

52:21

agent can only poison so many people. You can't

52:24

do that to take out an entire you

52:26

know, groove of soldiers. The Hague

52:29

Convention of e ended

52:31

up stepping in and prohibiting

52:34

the use of rice and as a projectile

52:36

coding, uh, plus other dispersal

52:39

methods that ultimately

52:42

proved ineffective, because that's

52:44

one of the things that you encounter with with a lot of

52:46

potential bioweapons is

52:49

Okay, the the substance itself is deadly

52:51

under certain circumstances, but that doesn't

52:53

mean it can really effectively be

52:56

weaponized and deployed

52:58

against, especially against like a man troops

53:00

situation or you know, or

53:03

a major center of population. Wow. Okay,

53:05

So I'm thinking by projectile

53:08

coating, we're talking about bullets. So

53:10

you literally coat bullets and ricing. That's

53:13

that is what is specifically banned. Yeah,

53:16

Now, as you might imagine

53:18

rice and occasionally pops up in small

53:20

acts of terrorism, but that

53:22

it makes it an ineffective mass terror

53:25

weapon as well. According to a study from the New

53:27

Zealand National Poison Center,

53:29

terrorists would need several metric tons

53:32

of rice and in order to in order to target

53:34

a large population. So it's a lot of beans.

53:36

Yeah, that's a lot of beans. And it's again

53:39

it's an example of this is a poison that

53:41

can be used with deadly efficiency

53:44

on an individual basis, but

53:46

it's not the kind of thing you would necessarily be able

53:48

to dump into the water. So this isn't what we refer

53:51

to as a chemical of mass destruction necessarily.

53:54

Now, um. There there

53:56

is one case though, that's pretty

53:58

interesting, where it was effective in an

54:00

assassination poisoning. Uh

54:03

and this occurred in nineteen sixty

54:05

nine when an assassin fired

54:07

a rice and laced pellet much

54:09

less like our our above example

54:12

into the leg of defected Bulgarian

54:14

writer uh Gegory Markovy.

54:18

Wow. Okay, so like,

54:21

h this is just blowing my mind, Like the idea

54:24

obviously, like you see this in fantasy stuff like

54:26

Game of Thrones, right, like, oh, I'll coat my sword

54:28

with a poison or actually

54:30

I think, doesn't um, one of the guys from

54:33

Dorn he puts like some poison on his spear

54:35

or something like that. Yeah,

54:38

but like I don't know, I just never

54:40

thought that would work on high

54:42

velocity projectiles. A poison

54:44

bullet, but a poison pellet in this

54:47

case. But we have examples to run

54:49

through just what happens with rice and poisoning.

54:51

If you inhale it, there's a respiratory

54:54

distress, fever, cough, nausea,

54:56

a tightness in the chest, and it's

54:58

gonna lead to a heavy breathing, low blood blood

55:00

pressure, and respiratory failure. If

55:03

it's ingested, then you get vomiting,

55:05

bloody diarrhea, severe dehydration,

55:08

low blood pressure, seizures, organ failure,

55:10

central nervous system problems, etcetera.

55:12

So either way, you shake it. And then of

55:14

course, if you if you get shot into your leg as well,

55:17

Um, some some bad

55:19

stuff happens to your body, and it will happen between

55:22

you know, in a four and a twenty four hour on set

55:24

period. Wow. So pretty

55:26

much of the six that we've chosen here today,

55:29

most of them have derived from some

55:31

kind of whether it's a beetle or a

55:33

bean, something that's just kind of crawling

55:35

around in our natural environment, something

55:38

that grows naturally in the world and exists.

55:40

Yeah, they're all organic. You can feel good and

55:42

and have and using an organic poison, but

55:44

they just don't write exactly. Yeah,

55:46

you can sell them at whole Foods, but they

55:49

don't mix with our body chemistry,

55:51

like just the science basically

55:55

turns your body against you. Right.

55:57

This next one though, is and

56:00

I have to say part of my reason for choosing

56:03

this was because of the term heavy

56:05

metal. So it's actual.

56:08

It's an actual element that can

56:10

can kill you. And the reason I found out about this

56:13

was because of a movie called The Young Poisoner's

56:16

Handbook. And I don't know if you haven't

56:18

seen it. We talked about this, but if anybody

56:20

out there has seen, it's this interesting indie movie

56:22

from the nineties. I want to say, Okay,

56:24

so when you mentioned earlier, I had no idea like where

56:26

to place in the timeline. Yeah, I want to say

56:28

I saw it in the late nineties. Uh.

56:30

And it is a true story about a guy named Graham

56:33

Young. He was a British teenager in nineteen

56:35

sixty two, and he used thallium

56:37

to kill his stepmother and then

56:39

sickened several other of his family

56:41

members. And then he was found

56:44

guilty of that. He was placed in an institution.

56:46

Then he got released from that institution

56:48

in nineteen seventy one, and you know what he did.

56:50

He promptly went and killed two of

56:53

his co workers with the same poisoning.

56:55

He seriously injured two more with

56:57

thallium poisoning. So this is a guy who was like essed

57:00

with thallium and he died

57:02

in nine himself from a heart

57:04

attack while he was in prison for his second term.

57:07

Now, thallium is

57:09

a heavy metal. This

57:12

means it's a member of a group of elements

57:14

that have similar chemistry to one another. This includes

57:17

lead, arsenic in timany,

57:19

mercury, and cadmium. All

57:22

of these are toxic and they tend

57:24

to accumulate inside human

57:26

tissues when they're digested. Furthermore,

57:29

they pass along up the food chain

57:31

when they're consumed. Right, So, uh,

57:33

let's say a rabbit gets

57:36

arsenic poisoning and then you eat the rabbit,

57:38

you're then ingesting the arsenic

57:41

yourself. To write, so, thallium

57:43

is a known poisonous substance

57:46

and it's commonly found in rat

57:48

poison and insecticides, and it's

57:50

nicknamed the poisoner's poison,

57:52

and the other nickname it has is inheritance

57:55

powder. Uh. Yeah,

57:58

But since the nineteen seventy is it's been

58:00

strictly controlled because of how

58:02

toxic it is. It's colorless,

58:05

it's odorless, and it's tasteless

58:07

as well as being soluble

58:09

in water. It's essentially a

58:11

soft gray metal that resembles

58:14

tin, and it's so soft, in fact, that

58:17

you can cut it with a knife. Now,

58:19

thallium attacks the human nervous

58:21

system and our internal organs,

58:24

and this causes hair loss, vomiting,

58:27

and diarrhea. I think all six of these poisons.

58:29

Of diarrhea is a common denominator. And

58:32

yeah, I guess it's a pretty good symptom of your your body

58:34

just giving up the ghost. Yeah,

58:36

it's easy to confuse the symptoms

58:38

of thallium poisoning with viral diseases

58:41

like influence of For instance, only

58:43

a dose of one gram can lead

58:45

to death. So three days after

58:48

you poison a victim, they'll start suffering

58:50

headaches, muscle problems, convulsions,

58:52

they might go into a coma, they might experience

58:55

delirium or dementia, maybe even psychosis.

58:57

It acts slowly compared to

59:00

a lot of the other poisons we've been talking about today,

59:02

and it's very painful. It's especially

59:04

attractive to poisoners because

59:06

the symptoms resemble other illnesses

59:09

and conditions, so you can usually

59:11

get away with saying like, well, it looks like somebody

59:13

has the flu, and then they dropped dead a day

59:15

later. Other symptoms include

59:18

alteration of the brain, a

59:20

fast beating heart that doesn't effectively

59:22

pump blood, skin eruptions,

59:25

swelling and sores in the mouth, skin

59:28

atrophy, and something that's

59:30

referred to as knees lines.

59:32

This is m e E. These

59:35

are when on your nails you

59:37

get these like white lines

59:39

across your fingernails. I've never heard

59:41

of this before, but apparently that's

59:43

a symptom of thallium poisoning.

59:46

Uh. And you can also have just a

59:48

general physical sensitivity

59:51

from your skin. There's also degenerative

59:53

changes in the heart, liver, and kidneys,

59:56

as well as bone marrow depression.

59:59

The gastro intestinal phase

1:00:01

of this poisoning that comes

1:00:03

before the neurological phase,

1:00:05

so that occurs anywhere from twenty

1:00:07

four to forty eight hours after ingestion,

1:00:10

then the neurological symptoms. Those can

1:00:12

take up to two to five days. The

1:00:15

big sign that it's thallium and not something

1:00:17

else is alopecia, meaning hair loss

1:00:19

when your hair starts falling out, and this can

1:00:21

occur up to two to three weeks later,

1:00:24

but death actually can occur within five

1:00:26

to seven days. It just depends the body

1:00:29

and the dosage it's within it based on

1:00:31

you know whether or not your hair is gonna fall out

1:00:33

before you die. Essentially. Now,

1:00:36

thallium was isolated independently

1:00:39

by two chemists in eighteen sixty

1:00:41

one. We're talking about William Crooks

1:00:43

and Claude august LeMay.

1:00:46

But it was technically discovered

1:00:48

by Crooks, and it's found naturally

1:00:51

in things like crook site, laurendite,

1:00:53

hutch In site, some pyrites, and

1:00:55

manganese nodules that are found on the

1:00:57

ocean floor. It can be recovered

1:01:00

heard by taking the oars and roasting

1:01:02

them in connection with the production

1:01:05

of sulfuric acid, or

1:01:07

by smelting lead and zinc ores

1:01:09

at the same time. Now, thallium

1:01:12

has been used to poison people through

1:01:14

their tea and other consumables,

1:01:17

so this against is why it

1:01:19

is the poisoner's poison. Uh.

1:01:21

This actually happened in nineteen fifty three

1:01:23

when Australian Caroline Grills

1:01:26

killed three of her family members and a

1:01:28

family friend by dosing their

1:01:30

tea with thallium. In two

1:01:32

thousand and six, a seventeen

1:01:34

year old Japanese girl poisoned her

1:01:36

mother's tea and then kept a

1:01:39

blog about how her condition developed.

1:01:41

So she essentially, over the days was tracking

1:01:44

how the thallium was affecting her mother.

1:01:46

But it's just that just goes to show. Even in two thousand

1:01:48

six, people were so hard pressed for some sort of

1:01:50

angle for their blog. I mean, you had to try.

1:01:53

She had. She was looking to get those CPMs

1:01:55

from her Google ad Sense. I guess I don't know. No,

1:01:58

it's horrible to make jokes about this. I

1:02:00

think her mother lived, so luckily it

1:02:02

turned out okay. Thallium was reportedly

1:02:05

plotted actually as a means to also

1:02:07

kill Nelson Mandela when he

1:02:09

was in prison, and then in two thousand

1:02:11

four, Russian soldiers

1:02:14

accidentally mixed thallium together

1:02:16

with their tobacco. They were like handmaking

1:02:19

tobacco cigarettes. They actually mix

1:02:21

it together and then we're treated for poisoning

1:02:23

after they smoked it, and then they used

1:02:26

it as a talcum powder for their feet

1:02:28

as well. Yeah, yeah,

1:02:30

So this just goes to show you be careful about

1:02:32

what you put in your cigarettes, I guess,

1:02:35

yeah, or what you put on your

1:02:37

feet. Investigators from

1:02:39

the World Health Organization also say

1:02:42

that thallium was something that Saddam Hussein

1:02:44

used to kill hundreds of dissidents.

1:02:47

So this stuff has a long

1:02:49

history. It's it's it's a nasty bit of

1:02:51

business. Fortunately

1:02:54

it can be treated. It's treated

1:02:56

with something called Prussian blue, and this

1:02:58

is a blue chemical pigment uh

1:03:00

in a combination of potassium chloride.

1:03:03

It's actually thought that Prussian blue

1:03:06

binds with thallium when

1:03:08

it's inside our intestinal tracks,

1:03:10

and this is more effectively than something

1:03:12

that's called activated charcoal, which is often

1:03:14

used to help the spell these poisons.

1:03:18

So it binds better with it that it

1:03:20

keeps it from being absorbed and then passed through

1:03:22

the rest of your body. Activated

1:03:24

charcoal, though, is recommended in the absence

1:03:26

of Prussian blue. So like most people's first aid

1:03:28

kits don't have Prussian blue in it, right, But

1:03:31

but you might have these charcoal capsules

1:03:33

now you can buy charcoal capsules that your local

1:03:35

health store. Yeah, so

1:03:38

thallium's derivatives, they're actually

1:03:40

really common in just everyday

1:03:42

items that we use, like medical

1:03:45

scanners, electronic components, optical

1:03:47

lenses, imitation jewelry, thermometers.

1:03:50

And here's a weird one. Green colored

1:03:52

fireworks specifically have thallium

1:03:54

in them. Well, this is this makes the Russian

1:03:57

account make more sense because I mean, do accidentally

1:03:59

get it into your cigarettes. It has to be around,

1:04:02

you know, around in some quantity.

1:04:05

Maybe they were grinding up imitation jewelry

1:04:07

and smoking. I hope they weren't smoking

1:04:09

green fireworks, but yeah, I'm

1:04:11

not quite sure. It sounded to me

1:04:13

like it was something that was like available

1:04:16

on whatever base they were stationed at, and

1:04:18

I think they thought it was just something that would help

1:04:20

bind their tobacco together. Now

1:04:23

here's the thing. Thallium, because it

1:04:25

emits gamma rays, it can actually

1:04:27

help doctors tell whether a heart

1:04:29

is receiving enough blood and oxygen.

1:04:32

So you essentially injected into a patient

1:04:34

and you can you know, use a combination

1:04:37

of gamma rays and thallium to see

1:04:39

what's going on with a patient's heart. And

1:04:41

medically it used to be used to

1:04:44

treat ring worm and other skin

1:04:46

infections, but now we consider

1:04:48

it way too toxic to chance that.

1:04:51

So there's other better ways to treat

1:04:53

your ring worm now than than thallium

1:04:55

poisoning. So that's thallium. That

1:04:57

is one of just a few

1:05:00

heavy metals that can be used to poison

1:05:02

a human being. Yeah,

1:05:05

well, I think we we covered six really

1:05:07

good ones here. It is one of those situations

1:05:09

where we could always come back and cover six

1:05:12

more at some point. Yeah, if those of you out

1:05:14

there found this interesting you want us to do more, please

1:05:16

let us know. You can get in touch with

1:05:18

us on social media. We're on Facebook,

1:05:21

Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.

1:05:23

We also have our new Facebook

1:05:26

discussion module where we

1:05:28

have sort of more uh I guess,

1:05:30

smaller intimate conversations about topics

1:05:33

from the podcast. Yeah, it's a good

1:05:35

place for longer form discussion as

1:05:37

well. Yeah, so if you want to confess

1:05:39

to any poisonings that you've committed,

1:05:42

you know, you can go on there and let us know. And rather

1:05:44

than letting a million of our Facebook page

1:05:46

followers know, you'll probably be letting like two

1:05:49

hundred Yeah. Oh

1:05:51

um, uh, take it with a pinch

1:05:53

of salt like a grain of salt. I meant to uh

1:05:56

to expand on that, so real quick before

1:05:58

we close out um

1:06:00

plenty of the elder wrote about

1:06:02

this. He used to he used the term grain

1:06:04

taking with a grain of salt in the

1:06:07

natural history, because he was quite

1:06:09

obsessed with antidotes for poisons

1:06:11

as well as the poisons themselves. And he shared

1:06:13

the following. After the defeat of that

1:06:15

mighty monarch, Maritha dots Neis,

1:06:18

Pompeius found in his private cabinet

1:06:21

a recipe for an anecdote in

1:06:23

his own handwriting, it was to

1:06:25

the following effect. Take two dried walnuts,

1:06:28

two figs and twenty leaves of rue,

1:06:30

pound them all together with the addition

1:06:33

of a grain of salt. If a type person

1:06:35

takes this mixture fasting, he

1:06:37

will be proof against all poisons

1:06:39

for that day. So take that with

1:06:41

a grain of salt. But this is one of this

1:06:43

is often attributed as being

1:06:46

where we get that for etymological origin

1:06:48

of the grain of salt. That's interesting. I

1:06:50

don't know the grain of salt would help you against

1:06:52

thalium poison. I don't do not think

1:06:54

it would. Okay,

1:06:57

all right, well, hey, once again there

1:07:00

go six deadly poisons, and if you have

1:07:02

you want to get in touch with this directly, you

1:07:04

can send your least poisonous

1:07:06

comments to us at blow the Mind

1:07:08

at how stuff works dot com

1:07:19

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1:07:22

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