The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in NYC recently put up a
new exhibit called “The Power of Poison,” which a few colleagues pointed out
for me. “That is my thing!” I mused. It may not have much history in it
given the curator being a zoologist, but the topic is too close to my research
to be missed. So I went early this week to check it out.
As a whole, the exhibit is not bad. In an online
video, the curator introduced the show by citing the words of a famous 16th
century alchemist Paracelsus: “All things are poison and nothing is without
poison.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dEuJqbJo6S4) I love this quote because it speaks to the essence of poison – poison
is not defined by what it is but by how it is used. [Paracelsus is such a
fascinating figure who deserves a full entry. Stay tuned!] The start of the
exhibit echoes this philosophy. It shows a box of chocolates: they are our
favorite treats, but poisonous to dogs (theobromine causes seizures in dogs).
What makes a poison depends on who or what you are. It then shows a large bowl
of salt: it is vital to life, but too much of it can kill. Dose matters.
Despite the promising start, the rest of the exhibit doesn’t follow suit, but
rather focuses on the toxic effects of various poisons. The relativistic and paradoxical
meaning of poison is largely lost.
The most interesting section of the show is
“Poison in Myth and Legend.” What were the earliest human experiences with
poisons? Imagine that we lived 30,000 years ago, when agriculture was yet developed
and we co-inhabited with dangerous plants and animals. Our first experiences
with poisons probably came from eating toxic plants or being attacked by
poisonous animals such as snakes and scorpions. It is believed that the
original meaning of Chinese character du
(毒) is snake
in grass. The 2nd century BCE work Masters of Huainanzi (淮南子) includes a legend that the founder of Chinese
agriculture and pharmacology the Divine Farmer (Shennong) tasted hundreds of herbs to find useful medicines for his
people. A later legend adds that the courageous and benevolent Shennong eventually died from eating a highly
poisonous herb called gouwen (鉤吻). These
early interactions with poisons, likely by accident, gradually taught humans to
avoid them or even better, use them for good. In a hunting society, the
earliest use of poisons was probably for making poisonous arrows. The exhibit
presents a nice animation of a Greek legend: The Greek hero Hercules (that is
where the word “Herculean” came from) killed the nine-headed serpent Hydra and
smeared its blood onto his arrows to make powerful weapon.
Such a legend may
have a historical basis. The earliest evident of using poisons came from an
archeological site recently discovered in South Africa (dated 24,000 years
ago), where residues of castor beans (蓖麻) were found on a wooden poison applicator.
Interestingly, the English word “toxic” derived from the Greek word “toxikon,”
meaning poison arrows.
Ancient China also
used poisonous arrows, most prominently with a poisonous herb called wutou (烏頭). In a famous story in the Romances of the Three Kingdom (三國演義), the Shu general Guan Yu was wounded by an
arrow poison of wutou, and he
courageously asked the physician Hua Tuo to scrap off the poison from his
bones. I need to remind the curious readers that although the story is also in
the original Sanguo zhi (三國志), which the
Ming novel is based on, the poison of wutou
is not specified there. In any case, the use of wutou for military purposes lasted long in Chinese history. In a
military treatise called Wubei zhi (武備志) in the 17th
century, we find a detailed recipe to prepare an arrow poison called 見血封喉, which
involves wutou. The name gives us an
instant chill.
