Snake Man: On Poisoners and Poisons in History

As a tool of murder between humans themselves, poison has clear advantages over the other methods. Poisoning is a silent murder, and its action lasts a long time: when the victim begins to feel the effects of the poison, the killer may be many miles away

This article is taken from the show's script.Making history!', a bi-weekly podcast about the history of science and technology

The hundred years before the birth of the Christian Jesus were good years for the Roman Republic. In fact, during this period the Roman Republic became the 'Roman Empire', under the leadership of the emperors Julius and Augustus. These hundred years were, on the other hand, difficult years for those who were the neighbors and rivals of the Romans.
One of those opponents - Mithridates VI, also known as Mithridates the Great - made his mark in the annals of history as the one who bravely faced the great generals of the empire and their fearsome Roman legions. Mithridates ruled the kingdom of Pontus, northern Turkey of today, and waged bitter battles against the Romans - some quite successful. At one point Mithridates the Great managed to conquer large parts of Greece, including the city of Athens.
Despite his successes Mithridates lived in great fear for his life. Perhaps rightly so: the politics in the Phoenician kingdom were hard and cruel - even Mithridates' mother, in her attempt to take over the kingdom following the death of his father, personally killed some of her sons who were candidates to inherit the power. The legends say that Mithridates slept with a horse, a bull and a deer in his room - so that they would warn him with loud voices if someone entered the room to eliminate him in his sleep.
As a tool of murder between humans themselves, poison has clear advantages over the other methods. Poisoning is a silent murder, and its action lasts a long time: when the victim begins to feel the effect of the poison, the killer may be many kilometers away. Unlike assassination with knives, swords, guns and other weapons, anyone - and anyone - can drip a few drops into a drink glass or cooking pot.
Mithridates King of Pontus knew very well that poisoning was the greatest danger that his political opponents posed to him. He decided to take action - to research the various poisons and find antidotes to them. His method of protecting himself from poisoning was to expose himself to poisons in low doses over time. He poisoned himself in tiny amounts every day, thus developing his body's legendary resistance to a wide range of poisons.
Mithridates managed, so the myths say, to find a medicine that was able to counteract the effect of all the poisons known to man. This medicine was called 'Mithridate', after his name, and was a complicated mixture of dozens of ingredients in different amounts - starting with cinnamon, through cinnamon and many other exotic natural substances and extracts.
When Mithridates was finally defeated on the battlefield by the Roman general Pompey the Great, he tried to commit suicide to avoid being captured. He and his two daughters swallowed a deadly poison—deadly for girls, it turns out, but not for Mithridates: his developed resistance to poisons proved itself, and he couldn't die. Finally he had to ask one of his officers to kill him with a sword thrust.
General Pompey took with him the formula for the miraculous Mithridates back to Rome. The formula was translated into Latin and passed down from generation to generation for nineteen hundred years, with changes and additions over the years. It is impossible to know whether Mithridates' original mithridate was really as effective as legend has it, but the versions of the formula that have survived the ravages of time are probably nothing more than a collection of aspirations and hopes whose efficacy as a real cure is rather dubious.
In the eighth century AD there was a dramatic development in the world of poisons when an Arab alchemist discovered a method to turn the element 'arsenic' into a transparent, tasteless and odorless compound when mixed with a liquid. Arsenic is one of the most powerful poisons known to man. Those who had an arsenic solution mixed into their drink initially felt mild headaches that gradually got worse, then strong stomach pains, vomiting and other symptoms that gradually became more and more horrible (there is no need to provide a full description of the nightmare here, for obvious reasons) until they ended in the almost certain death of the victim.
Those who turned poisoning into a powerful political tool were the members of the Italian Borgia family in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the beginning of the Renaissance. The Burjaim's use of poison was so massive and effective that the expression 'to drink from the Burja's cup' means, to this day, 'quick and sudden death'. Another saying, probably exaggerated but undoubtedly reflecting the reputation of this family, says that 'no one in Italy can say "yesterday I dined with the Borgias"'. Historians consider the Borgia family to be the 'first crime family in history', and the two figures who stood out in particular in the family were Rodrigo Borgia - he is Pope Alexander VI - and his son Cesare.
Alexander VI was perhaps the most corrupt pope in all the annals of the Catholic Church, certainly a considerable achievement for those who know a little about the political history of the Vatican. He was known for the large orgies he organized, the card bets and the bribes he gave to the other cardinals to sit on the papal chair. His nepotism (favoring relatives due to their proximity and not because of their skills) and the protections he arranged for his family members are truly amazing. His son Cesare was appointed a priest at the age of six, a bishop at the age of fifteen, an archbishop at the age of sixteen and a cardinal - the highest position in the church apart from the pope - at the mature age of seventeen.
Alexander VI and his son Cesare had an interesting method of appropriating other people's wealth. They developed an extremely powerful poison called 'Cantarella'. The formula for creating the chanterelle is lost to us, but from the descriptions of the victims' deaths it appears that arsenic was probably an important ingredient in this poison: vomiting, darkened skin, frothing at the mouth, and more.
Alexander and his son used to poison the rich members of the nobility in Rome, and after their death confiscate the treasures for themselves by virtue of a papal order. In August 1503, Alexander VI and Cesare planned the poisoning of Cardinal Adriano da Cornetto by the usual method of 'improving the wine' served to the table with a few drops of their cantarella. But something went wrong. Immediately at the end of the meal, the Pope and his son collapsed, vomiting their souls and foaming at the mouths: their doomsday weapon was turned against them. Cesare was young and managed to survive the poisoning with difficulty, but the Pope was already old and weak. The descriptions of the death of Alexander VI are unbearably difficult, and witnesses who described his body after he breathed his tormented soul said that they had never seen such a sickening sight. The Pope's face was completely black, the skin was peeling off him and the flesh gave off a terrible stench of sulfur. No one in Rome regretted the passing of one of the worst of the corrupt, and the stories I have brought here are only a small part of the crimes committed by the members of the family.
Arsenic poisoning was especially magical for women who wanted to get rid of their husbands: arsenic was also used as a pest control agent, and could be bought legally in pharmacies. Moreover, there were women who ingested tiny amounts of arsenic because in low doses arsenic would cause paleness in the face, which indicated that the woman was from the aristocracy because she did not do manual labor and therefore was not exposed to the sun. A woman who bought arsenic at a pharmacy was not immediately suspected of planning murder.
Twenty-two-year-old Madeline Smith comes from a well-to-do and respectable family in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1855 she met Emile Langelier, the son of a poor immigrant, and the two fell in love. They carried on a secret affair knowing that Madeline's family would never accept the lower class member into their ranks. The two lovers exchanged stormy love letters and even planned to marry secretly and run away.
But over time the love between the two young people grew cold, and the wedding was no longer on the horizon. Madeline's parents matched her with another man from a wealthy Scottish family, and Madeline decided to cut ties with Emil. She asked him to return all the love letters she had sent to him so that the forbidden affair between them would not be discovered. Emil, in his jealousy, refused to give her the letters and even threatened to send them himself to her father if she did not annul her marriage to the rich match.
Madeline reluctantly agreed to return to Emil's lap, but at the same time she began purchasing large quantities of arsenic from the local pharmacy under the pretext of eradicating a rat plague in her home. Emil started suffering from severe stomach pains, vomiting and agony. Two weeks later he passed away.
But the letters that Madeline wrote to Emil were discovered, and tests were conducted on the body of the lover (on which we will expand immediately) which revealed that he had indeed been poisoned with large amounts of arsenic. Madeleine was put on trial for murder, and the press celebrated the scandalous story of the poisonous daughter of the rich. Most of the public was convinced of Madeleine's guilt, but her lawyers did a good job: they managed to prove that Madeleine also used arsenic for the cosmetic purposes I mentioned earlier, and put forward the fascinating theory that Emil committed suicide by swallowing poison so that he could frame his ex-lover for murder. The verdict in the trial was 'not proven guilty', which is not the same as 'not guilty'. This is a unique ruling for the Scottish justice system that allowed the accused to go free but still carry with him the stigma of a murderer. Madeline's marriage to the wealthy husband was annulled, of course, and she fled Britain to the United States.
The person who invented the first accurate test for detecting arsenic in the body was James Marsh in 1832. Marsh was a chemist called to testify in the murder trial of a man accused of poisoning his grandfather by mixing arsenic in his coffee. Marsh tried the existing methods for detecting arsenic in the body of the murdered man, and came to the conclusion that the body did contain arsenic - but the defense attorneys were able to cast doubt on the findings because the existing tests were not accurate and reliable enough, and the accused went free. Marsh was frustrated and angry, especially since the killer later did confess to the murder. He decided to develop a new arsenic test, and after some time was able to develop an experiment to detect arsenic in body tissues that was accurate above and beyond all his predecessors. This discovery led to a decrease in the number of arsenic poisonings, as more and more potential poisoners feared they might be discovered.
But the use of poison as a weapon did not stop, and arsenic was replaced by even more sophisticated and effective poisons. Cyanide gained publicity when senior Nazi regime officials committed suicide with its help after the fall of the Third Reich. Viktor Yushchenko, a Ukrainian opposition leader and outspoken opponent of Russia, was poisoned under mysterious circumstances in 2004 and barely survived with his face heavily scarred. The poison injected into his food was dioxin, and the doctors who examined him were amazed to find that the amount of dioxin measured in his body was the second highest ever measured in a living person.
Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent and another opponent of the Russian regime. He died after being poisoned by a large amount of polonium-210, a deadly radioactive substance that was injected into his food at a sushi restaurant in London. His illness and death (in November 2006) received extensive coverage in the British and international press. And of course, Khaled Mashal is one of the leaders of Hamas, who was poisoned by the Mossad in 1997 in Jordan and was given his life as a gift thanks to the Jordanian authorities' insistence on receiving the antidote, when they had two of the perpetrators arrested. These cases are undoubtedly the tip of the iceberg, and there were undoubtedly many more political assassinations whose perpetrators managed to disguise them well as natural deaths. It is possible that the historians of the future, equipped with sophisticated tests and an appropriate perspective, will see the events of today in a completely different light than we see them today...

This article is taken from the show's script.Making history!', a bi-weekly podcast about the history of science and technology